Dennis Tuuri

Our sermon text is Deuteronomy 5:11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Deuteronomy 5:11. This is the third commandment, the third word identified as such in the Hebrew Old Testament. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Let’s pray. Lord God, God, we thank you for the forgiveness of sins through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the praises you’ve received from us now. And we thank you, Lord God, that you come to us in your word and teach us and instruct us and do more than that. You transform our hearts by this word and by your spirit. Bless us with a fuller understanding of this word. Father, we thank you for the guiltless state in which we stand in your presence because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Thank you for the warning of this text that guiltlessness is removed from those who do not take your name fully and with a full witness to Jesus Christ. Bless us as we consider this law. In his name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be seated. You’ll notice in our songs today, we have emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit a couple of times already as we teach these words, the 10 words, the ten commandments to our children. And I hope we’re doing that. It’s very important that we do. And as we do that, there are some mechanisms that make it a little easier to accomplish this that I think also give us a little fuller understanding of what these words say.

There’s a sense in which the first four commandments are a unit. And so there’s three commandments. And as we obey those three, we come into Sabbath day or Lord’s day joy and enthronement. And there’s a sense in which while God has a unity, he also exists in his trinity, three persons in one.

There’s a sense in which I think these first three commandments focus primarily first on the father, second on the son, and third on the holy spirit. As we’ll see in today’s text, in today’s sermon, looking at carefully at some of the words in this law, this text is only marginally one that warns us about swearing and using curse words. It’s really about much more than that. It’s about a full orbed witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in everything that we say and do.

And that is only possible in the context of a spirit-filled life. The Holy Spirit comes to empower us to do the sort of work that the third word commands us to do. So the emphatic person that stressed I think in the third commandment is the spirit. The son is the word. And in the second commandment we saw that the great emphasis was not replacing God’s word, his ten commandments, his law, his written scripture, the word, the Lord Jesus Christ with images as mediators between us and God. Jesus is the one mediator between us and the Father. So the second commandment really focused primarily on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

As I said, all three of them contain a reference to the trinity in all of them, of course. So we don’t want to make these too broad or too strict categories. But the emphasis, I think the stress in the second commandment is the word Jesus. And the first commandment, the requirement to have no greater authority above the authority the law commands us to honor Elohim, our strong one, is the ultimate strong one.

And I think that probably has reference primarily to the father. Yeah. Jesus is Lord. Lord of lords, king of kings. But the father is enacting his will in the world. The father is the strong one. And again there the common misunderstanding is no other gods. It doesn’t really say no other gods. It says no other gods before me before the father. He’s the ultimate source of an authority from which all other authorities draw their substance or nature.

So I think the first three commandments track father, son, and holy spirit with emphasis. And as we have a full orbed witness of the Trinity and as we honor all three members of the Trinity in our lives, that brings us into the fourth commandment where we get to Sabbath day enthronement, Lord’s day joy. That’s what completes the circuit of four. And then there’s three and three left.

We’ve talked about this before, but again, in terms of teaching your children, I believe the next three, right? Honor your father, don’t kill your brother, and don’t commit adultery. Don’t against the spirit that brings godliness. Track again the father, son, and holy spirit. And then the last three, do the same thing. Don’t steal from your father like Adam did, right? Don’t bear false witness against your brother. Jesus is our brother. And don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or other things. Again, reference to the spirit as the matchmaker.

So the 10 words give us this kind of 4-3-3 arrangement. And one reason for that is to help us to understand it, to meditate upon it to reinforce the doctrine of the trinity even as we’re learning the 10 words. It’s impossible pretty much for human beings to remember a tenfold sequence in order. So to break it up into fours, threes, and threes where your telephone number is a three, a three, and a four. This is what we do. This is the way God has created us. And it has to do with the trinitarian nature of God.

One final thing before we begin the discussion specifically of the text here. There’s a sense as well, in which the first three commandments track history in the Old Testament, God’s people went through a tribal stage, a kingdom stage, and then an empire stage. And in a tribal pattern, decentralized, you’re kind of, you know, rural.

In the tribal stage, the great thing that you want to avoid is worshiping the powers and spirits of the created order. Things are good, you know, rulers are good, but you don’t want to worship them. Forces of nature are really powerful forces over you, but they’re not to be worshiped as the true God over all other forces and powers. And so, in a tribal period, we’re warned not to, you know, exalt any force or power above the one who delivers us from Egypt, Yahweh, our great Elohim.

In a kingdom stage, it seems like the people of God in the kingdom period, they were tempted to worship God by means of syncretistic worship. So, the northern kingdom you know, you got the whole worship of God through calves being mixed with Yahweh worship. So during the kingdom period, it seems like, you know, it’s really consistency in worshiping God through word as opposed to bringing in other mediators that stressed in the empire period in the last portion of the Old Testament history having to do with the prophetic books.

Israel’s great sin is hypocrisy, not bearing a full witness of Yahweh in the context of an empire situation. I think that third period is certainly characterizes the gospels as we’ll look at as we get to the end of the sermon today, but I think it also characterizes our day and age. Most of you are not tempted regularly to exalt some power or force above the God who made you. Most of you are not engaging in icon worship, bowing down to statues or images. Most of you are not trying to find other mediators other than Jesus.

But the thing I think that we’re particularly prone to do in the sort of setting we have now is to sin against the Holy Spirit by not having a full orbed witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of a diverse pluralistic culture. And in fact, there’s laws that prohibit your obedience to the third commandment in place. I’ll talk about that a little bit later.

But a specific law was passed in Oregon that I think is actually a law commanding you not to obey the third word. We’ll get to it as we go along.

So the first three commandments remind us of the trinity. The father is all powerful and we should honor him. The son is the word, the mediator between us and God. And as we obey father, son, and holy spirit, we go into Lord’s day joy. Okay. So let’s talk about this commandment and as I said, we seem to just sort of take that third commandment usually and just say, well, we don’t want to have bad speech. We don’t want to swear, take God’s name in vain with false swearing. And there’s a implication of that to the text, but there’s a lot more than that to it.

It doesn’t say don’t speak God’s name in vanity. It doesn’t say that. What it says specifically is don’t take God’s name. So, what we’re going to do really is just kind of a little emphasis on the individual words of this commandment as a way to help us understand what it means and how we’re supposed to obey it.

This word take. All right. On your outline then take it. First of all, this word don’t take the name of the Lord your God. It’s used a lot. It has different structural stresses or emphases. But one thing that is talked about is literally carrying something. Okay. So in Numbers and specifically in Numbers 4:15 the people of God were to carry the articles of the tabernacle.

So on the front of the order of worship today, they’re carrying the tabernacle through the wilderness. And that’s a good image for us, right? We’re bearing the special presence of God with us. We’re bearing the name of Christians as we move through the wilderness. But it means literally they’re carrying it, right? So in Numbers 4:15, when Aaron and his sons had finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary when the camp is set up to go. Then the sons of Kohath shall come to carry them, but they shall not touch any holy thing.

So this section of Numbers talks about the three families of Aaron, Kohathites, Gershonites, and Merarites. And they each carried a different aspect of the tabernacle. One group carried the skin, the outer tents and structure. Another group carried the bone, the stuff, the posts and stuff. And the third group carried the innards, the internal organs. They carried the, you know, the lampstand and the golden altar and the ark of the covenant.

And I use those terms because really that’s kind of the same as us. We have skin, we’ve got a structure with bones, and we got internal organs. And the tabernacle is ultimately, you know, personal. When the description of the temple is made, for instance, it has ribs. It doesn’t just have walls like a building would have walls. It’s got ribs. And so when you come into a building really buildings are sort of representations of people and in the scriptures the tabernacle and then later the temple is a representation of Christ ultimately.

But beyond that it’s a representation of God’s people. When God’s people are taken into captivity, what happens with Nebuchadnezzar? He takes the articles of the temple into captivity as well. They’re human. But in any event, the point here is that to take the name, to take the presence of God in terms of the tabernacle meant to carry it around. They’re walking, they’re carrying articles of furniture.

Then it says in another text about the high priest, Exodus 28:12, it says that you shall put two stones on the shoulders of the Ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. So Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders. Same word. So now Aaron the high priest will bear Israel on his shoulders. Now ultimately the high priest is a picture of Christ. Christ bears us, carries us, but Aaron bears the children of Israel.

Secondly, Aaron also bore a plate on his forehead. Exodus 28:36-38. You shall make a plate of pure gold and engraved on it like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the Lord. And the text goes on to say that you shall not you shall put in it a blue cord that it may be at the turban. It shall be on the front of the turban. So it shall be on Aaron’s forehead that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of Israel hallow in all their holy gifts.

And it shall always be on his forehead that they may be accepted for the Lord. So Aaron also bears this thing. Now the word’s translated plate in this particular text. But this word is used maybe 12 or 15 times in the Old Testament and most times it’s translated flower or blossom. It’s not translated plate. I don’t know why it’s translated plate in this particular section because you know number one the etymology of the word means to blossom or have be a flower.

And number two, there’s another flower on Aaron’s head in Numbers 17:8. It came to pass on the next day that Moses went into the tabernacle of witness, and behold, the rod of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted, put forth buds. They produced blossoms, the same word plate, and yielded ripe almonds. So, this is the rod, you know, that represents Aaron’s authority. His authority is challenged. God establishes Aaron as the ruler, the high priest with Aaron’s rod that blossoms and it becomes a flower on the end of it.

So the rod is Aaron. He’s got a flower on his head in the sense of what’s going on here with the symbolic representation that Aaron has authority from God and these other guys don’t. So Aaron has a flower on his head represented by the rod flowering and Aaron the high priest has to wear this flower on his head as well. He bears this flower that says holiness to the Lord.

So to take the name of God means to carry it, to bear it, to carry it around the same way those people carried those things. Kids on your coloring page today, you got this high priest guy. And what you want to do is draw a little flower on there on the forehead. And the alternate the text form shows a gold plate, but again there that’s a flower. So he’s got on his shoulders he’s carrying bearing same word Israel before God that on his forehead he’s bearing this plate that says holiness unto the Lord.

Okay. But on your coloring page kids make that a flower because that’s really what it is quite clearly.

So to take the name of the Lord to bear God’s name to take it up to actually carry it as it were The tribe of Levi took carried the tabernacle. The high priest took carried bore took something not the name of God but rather a flower on his hand on his head rather and God’s people on his shoulders. So to take the name of God means to carry it.

Okay. Secondly, there’s a bearing sense that’s a little different. Leviticus 19:17 says this, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. Same word. So here it’s not physically carrying. It’s the idea of morally carrying. You’re bearing sin. And you notice, by the way, I chose this example not just for the bearing culpability, but also as a reminder to us what we’re supposed to do with each other.

We’re supposed to not hate each other, but on the other hand, we’re also not to ignore sin. You’re supposed to rebuke your neighbor. You know, there’s two ditches in that road. And usually we fall into the ditch that wants to be nicer than Jesus. We don’t ever rebuke anybody. But it says here, if we don’t rebuke him, then we’re bearing iniquity. Okay? We’re bearing our sin. So to take means to bear.

Leviticus 5:1, another important verse. If a person sins in hearing the utterance of an oath and is a witness, whether he has seen or known of the matter, if he does not tell it, he bears guilt. Bear. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not physically carrying something, but he’s morally carrying guilt. And notice here again, I chose the example for a purpose, the particular verse. Again, if you don’t tell somebody, if you don’t bear witness, if you don’t give witness to what you know to be true, then you’re bearing guilt.

Okay? You can either bear witness of something or you can bear the guilt of something.

We’re going to have one of our announcements in the congregational meeting after the dinner today. This is reinforced. It’s the pro-snitch commandment here. Okay? You know, we’re not run off and tell people without going to the person who’s sinning. But if somebody that’s sinning, we go to them and they don’t stop and turn around and we have evidence of it. We’re supposed to tell the truth about it. We’re supposed to witness that to other people. We’re not supposed to just shut up. That’s what this ungodly culture tells you. But the Bible says that if you do that, if you don’t speak forth what you know to be true that somebody’s sinning in and you tell them, “Well, you better fix it or I’m going to have to tell somebody.” Follow through and tell somebody.

If you don’t, you bear sin. You bear guilt. So, it has the physical notion of carrying. It has the moral notion of bearing guilt. It also has the notion of lifting up. Deuteronomy 32:40, for I raise my hand to heaven and say, “As I live forever.” So, to raise your hand, we bore, we took up hands today in the context of worship means to lift up. So that’s another connotation of this same word.

Isaiah 49:22, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will lift my hand in an oath. And that’s why, you know, taking the name of God does have reference to false oaths. I’m not saying it doesn’t have to do with your speech. That is an implication of this particular lifting up. But see, it’s got a lot more than that. But in any event, you lift your hand to take a vow. And in parallel to this, he says, “I set up my standard.” To lift up a standard or a flag is to take something in the same way as taking the name of the Lord, right?

We’re to carry it. We’re to bear it upon ourselves. We’re to lift it up is the implication of this particular other connotation.

How the verse is used. 2 Samuel 2:22. Abner said again to Asahel, “Turn aside from following me, why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I lift up my face to your brother Joab? Your countenance can be lifted up or fall. And it’s the same word that’s used here, lift up my face.

So to be lifted up to bear. Isaiah 24:14, they shall lift up their voice. They shall sing for the majesty of the Lord. They shall cry aloud from the sea. So you today, actually, you get to very literally fulfill the third word by lifting up your hands to God, taking the name of God and to sing forth praises. So for instance, in the context of this verse, what it’s saying is don’t pretend to sing and then not sing. Don’t do it, you know, in vanity without following through. Don’t do it falsely. Don’t do it weakly. If you’re going to lift up the name of God in song, lift it up. Lift it up. Lift it up.

So these are the more connotations of this word bearing, carrying, lifting up high. These are all things that relate to this word take the name of the Lord. We take, lift up God’s name. When we sing, bearing away is a fourth connotation of this word. Now something is being borne away.

Leviticus 16:22, the goat, this is the scapegoat, shall bear on itself all the iniquities to an uninhabited land. So the sins of God’s people are laid on the scapegoat. He bears it away. He bears their sin and iniquity away as the scapegoat.

Leviticus 10:16-17. Moses made careful inquiry about the goat of the sin offering. There it was burned up. And he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar the sons of Aaron who were left saying, “Why have you not eaten the sin offering in a holy place? since it is most holy and God has given it to you to bear the guilt of the congregation. So the purification offering was supposed to be done particular things with and it would bear the guilt of the congregation which means to take it away. So the idea of bearing in the sense of taking something away is also in this in this and in fact frequently in the Bible you read a word forgiving it might be this word taking for instance Exodus 34:7 God says he keeps mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity the word forgiving is the translation of this same Hebrew word to carry to take to bear away funny huh you’d think that was a completely different it’s not a different word he forgives by means of bearing away our transgressions and so this is another implication of this word to take.

A goat took away the people’s sins.

And then finally the word has reference to princes and the prince. Okay. So in Numbers 1:16 we read these were chosen from the congregation leaders of their father’s tribes. This means princes and it has it’s the noun form of the same word. Some people think that the idea is they were voted into office through the lifting of hands. More likely though, this particular word for leaders stresses their lifting up of themselves in service to Yahweh.

When I when our church first started me 20 years ago, I did a series of sermons on all the offices of the Old Testament. You know, we have all these washings and food and drink ordinances that culminate down to baptism and the Lord’s supper. And My theory was is that we have all these offices of the Old Testament and in the New Testament it comes down to elders and deacons. And so to understand elders and deacons, you got to kind of understand the particular individual offices or what they were called in the Old Testament.

Well, this idea of prince having the same root as taking, taking, volunteering, serving willingly, lifting yourself up in service to Yahweh, that’s what a prince is. And that’s one particular name for the officers of the Old Testament. And it means, of course, that’s who we are in Christ ultimately. That’s what your elders and deacons are. They’re men who have lifted up themselves in service to Yahweh.

Well, there were princes. And when you see the word prince in the King James, that’s normally a translation of the same word for take the name of God. And then in Ezekiel, this is most frequently the word prince is has a ton of verses dealing with it. And over and over again we read for instance in Ezekiel 34:24 I the Lord will be their God and my servant David a prince among them I the Lord have spoken.

Ezekiel 37:25 then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob my servant where your fathers dwell and they shall dwell there. They children and their children’s children forever and my servant David shall be their prince forever. Now those are clearly messianic prophecies. They’re talking about the coming of the great creator David, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Jesus is a prince. He’s a Messiah. He’s one who’s lifted up. He’s serving God. He’s bearing the responsibilities that God has given to him as the great prince.

And there’s a book, I think it’s still in our library, hopefully that’s on your outline here, about Jesus’s post, it’s kind of a statement of postmillennialism by a guy named William Simington called What is it called? It’s under outline there. Christ the Prince. Is that what it’s called? Messiah the Prince or the Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ by William Simington. Real good book in the library.

But the point is here’s a final implication of this word to take the name of God. Ultimately all that stuff focuses on the person of the prince, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah who comes to do those things. So that’s what this word to take the name of God. Those are all the implications of it.

And as you can see, it’s quite different than just talking about speech. It’s talking about taking up the witness of Christ. It’s talking about bearing the truth of Christ. It’s talking about Jesus bearing away our sins as the prince and the high priest. And ultimately, it’s talking about our need to be witnesses to take up the name of Christ. We made a Christian this morning, right? William James is a Christian.

He’s got the name of Christ. He was baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The name of it. So, he’s got the name of Christ on him. Now, we’re all, as many people have talked about, little anointed ones, little messiahs, small M, little Christ, small C., we’re anointed in the context of Christian baptism. And we are anointed ones in the same way we take the name of Christ upon us. And so what the third word has to do with is what do we do with that name?

How do we live our lives as Christians in the context of the world? And that is after all the second part of the phrase here. Don’t take the name of the Lord your God. So just a couple of comments briefly about what it is we’re taking. We’re taking the name of the Lord your God. Well, the name of Yahweh is Yahweh and Yahweh is God. So it means take taking God’s presence upon ourself and this is why the spirit comes into play here.

The Holy Spirit brings us the things of Christ unites us with Christ and so we carry the name of Yahweh our strong one our Elohim God the name of the Lord is Yahweh here God is Elohim we’ve talked about this before these are the same two names that are applied to the first word God our Elohim has brought us out of Egypt. He’s our Yahweh is the covenant name of God. Yahweh was the name that God gave to Moses based upon the idea that he’s self-existent.

He’s the only entity that has self-existence in and of himself. We’re all other created things. So Yahweh is the one who is self-existent, who has life in and of himself. And we take up the name or the presence of Yahweh, our strong one, in the world. So, we’re supposed to do that. It’s just we’re not supposed to do it with emptiness. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

Now, who’s Yahweh? Well, in Psalm 110, we read, “The Lord Yahweh said to my Lord, Adonai.” You know, in the King James, if the word Lord in the Old Testament is all caps, that’s Yahweh. And if the word Lord is just capital L small O R D, that’s not Yahweh. Well, here Yahweh is saying to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Well, clearly Yahweh there is the father, right? The father is speaking to the son, sit at my right hand until death itself is abolished. All your enemies are abolished.

So, first of all, Yahweh clearly in that verse in that Psalm 110:1 is the father. But other texts make it quite clear that Yahweh is also Jesus. Jesus in Hebrews 1 we read in verse 10 and following you Lord in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and that again Lord is in all caps there. You laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish but you remain and they will all grow old like a garment like a cloak. You will fold them up and they’ll be changed but you are the same and your years will not fail.

Now what Hebrews 1 is talking about is the supremacy of Jesus Christ, the son. And so all these verses that are being cited are explicitly said to be cited about the son. They’re being quoted about the son. Well, if you look back on what’s being quoted there, it’s Psalm 102 in verse 21 of Psalm 102 to declare the name of the Lord Yahweh in Zion, his praise in Jerusalem. When the peoples are gathered together in the kingdoms to serve Yahweh. Of old, you Yahweh obviously laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

They’ll perish, but you’ll endure. Yes, they will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak. You will change them, and they will be changed, but you are the same. Your years will have no end. So clearly there and in many other places, Jesus is Yahweh. So the father is Yahweh. Jesus is Yahweh. Yahweh is kind of like a family name, you could say. Or you could say Yahweh the name of the father is what’s given to the son who represents the father.

But the point is when we take the name of Yahweh, we’re taking the name of the father and the son. We’re doing it in the power of the spirit. And the spirit is the spirit of Yahweh. It’s another designation used in the scriptures, the spirit of Yahweh. So the trinity is really the name that we’re carrying with us as Christians. And emphasis on Christ because it’s through Christ that we’re united to the trinity.

But that what’s going on.

Now, again, to take the name of Yahweh means to take upon ourselves life. We’re not going to talk about it today, but my next sermon will be on Deuteronomy 14, which is an exposition of the third word, and it’s about life as opposed to death. When we take the name of Yahweh, we’re taking the only source of life. And we take it when we take it falsely or without really taking it, we’re moving in the context of death.

And that’s what Deuteronomy 14 will talk about. So to take the name of Yahweh is to take the name of life and to be a dispenser of life in the context of the world.

So Jesus is Yahweh. The father is Yahweh. And when we’re baptized, we put on the name of God. We bear the name of God. We’re baptized with God’s name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We’re baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So whether you like it or not, if you’re sitting here today and have been baptized, you’re a Christbearer. You’re the recipient of this third word. You’re told explicitly that there’s something very important about the way you bear Christ in the world. So this is direct relevance not just to when you lose your temper and swear. In fact, it’s got very little relevance to that. That’s there’s some relevance, but it’s really talking about this whole orbed view of taking up, bearing, lifting up, volunteering, etc. carrying the name of Yahweh wherever we go.

So if you’ve been baptized, this third word has specific relevance to you. You’re not supposed to do it in vain. And see this again, for some reason, American culture, you know, you’re taking God’s name in vain. You said blankety blank, you took his name in vain. Well, sort of. I mean, it’s sort of true, but it’s just so simplistic and reductionistic to look at it today.

What does it mean vain? Well, vain has a couple of implications. The particular Hebrew word in Deuteronomy 5:20 which is the ninth commandment were not to bear false witness against your neighbor. And false is vain. It’s the same word. So, we’ve got another word in the ten commandments that help us to understand what vain means. And there the emphasis is false.

Now, Earlier we saw in another scripture that the emphasis was not bearing anything at all. And those are the two connotations of the word vanity. Nothingness or falseness. To lie about something or to simply not witness to it at all. They’re sort of related, but that’s what it means. In Psalm 60:1, give us help from trouble, for the help of man is useless. Now there the emphasis isn’t false, but it’s empty. It’s void. There’s nothing to it. The help of man is useless. And those are the two connotations.

False witness, empty witness. So, you can’t get away from the third commandment by just not saying certain things. That would be a false witness. If you use God’s name in vain, usually you’re not using it with heaviness. You’re using it lightly, vainly, but it’s a false witness. But if all you do is prohibit yourself from speaking God’s name in that way, well then you’re back to having no witness at all.

Right? And that’s a violation of this same commandment. So whether it’s a false witness or an empty witness, that’s what you’re prohibited from doing by this particular commandment.

This word vanity means like to be poured out. And so empty of something. You pour something out. A libation offering is emptied. It’s vain. It becomes vain because it’s been emptied out. It means unsubstantial, unreal, worthless. Okay? Things that are unsubstantial, unreal, worthless, or positively twisted. Okay? People are to be able to discern, to understand something about God as they observe us. We’re to take the name of Yahweh in fullness. In other words, not emptily, but in fullness and in truth.

What it means is that we as Christians, as baptized ones, as little anointed ones, little Christs, we’re to have a full witness as to the character and meaning of who God is to the world. And people are to be able to discern God by what they observe in us and in our lives, in our lives individually, in our families, in our churches, in the way we go about everything. If we live empty and false lives, then the revelation of God is distorted and compromised and even sometimes falsified. When we take a bad witness of God and give that to the world, now God’s truth is vain. It’s been falsified.

So what the third word requires is a full witness to the God who bears your sins. You’re to bear his name properly, lifting it up, carrying it even in the context of the wilderness. so that the wilderness and those in it can see who God is. You’re that you’re the little picture. You’re the real revelation of God.

The two words, the two concepts rather of falseness and emptiness are linked in this word vainness of the third commandment. To carry a powerless empty God is to show a false god. So when we have a powerless weak-wristed limp kind of God who can’t get anything done and doesn’t have power and strength. It’s a false witness. It is to carry God’s name in vanity, to carry God into the world and into what we do with vanity or falseness. God is life. We’re to carry God’s name.

When we do it emptily, we move in terms of death, being dispensers of death as opposed to being dispensers of life. So vain means nothingness. Vain means nothingness. So there’s the commandment: bear God’s name in such a way as it’s not empty or a falsification of who God is.

And then there’s a sanction applied. This is why they’re words and not commandments. The commandment is that the word includes a sanction to that as well. And the word the sanction is that God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Guiltless. The idea there is pure, innocent, no charge being put to our account. Guiltless means what it sounds like, guiltless. But God says that if we don’t keep a full orbed witness of Christ, he’s not going to hold us as guiltless. Why are we guiltless? Because Jesus bore our sins away, right? He’s made us guiltless. But if we don’t exercise a full witness of Jesus Christ and who we are in the context of everything we do, God won’t hold us guiltless.

In other words, to hold us guilty. If we refuse to witness to life and if instead we witness to vanity, God will desolate us, right? He’ll bring destruction upon us. So there’s a significant sanction that’s kind of lex talionis. If we have an empty witness, he won’t hold us guiltless and he’ll then bring his punishments upon us and we’ll be devastated. We’ll be desolated by him. So strong sanction applied to a failure to bear a proper witness of Yahweh.

If we don’t trust in Jesus, well, the end result is we’re not trusting in the one who carried or bore our sins away. And if we don’t trust in that, God says, “You’re still bearing your sins. I’m not going to hold you guiltless because you’re not really, you don’t really have faith in the one who took your sins away and speak to him.” And as a result, you’ve got your sins still on you. Okay? You still carry that burden.

So if we don’t trust in Jesus, then we carry our own sins. We’re not guiltless. God says he won’t count us as guiltless.

So what this means is God hates hypocrisy. And as I said earlier, in our particular day and age, I think this is the particular the primary one of the first three words that trips us up more often than not. We live in the context of a culture that doesn’t want to hear exhaustive truth claims on the part of anybody. When you go into the public arena, you’re supposed to be devoid of a witness. And the public arena has been defined in larger and larger ways. And so what they’re doing is squelching a full orbed witness of Jesus Christ. And that’s our natural tendency anyway in the context of pluralism. We don’t want to be, you know, upsetting the apple cart. We don’t want people to dislike us. So we’re tempted to hypocrisy.

This is the very sin of the Jews. Look at Matthew 23. Open up your Bibles to Matthew 23:13 and following. These are the woes that Jesus proclaims on the Pharisees and let’s look at them.

Matthew 23:13. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. See, hypocrisy is what he convicts them as. For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. You don’t go in and you don’t let other people go in. And you devour widows’ houses.

Then the next one is another woe. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees. You devour widows’ houses. He’s saying you’re supposed to be people that bring people into the kingdom of God with your witness. You don’t do that. And actually, you keep people out of the kingdom because you look so crummy. Nobody wants to be like you. That’s what happens. That’s what the prophets are all about. Israel looks so bad. Who would want to be like that nation? Those corrupt people, they devour widows. How they don’t protect the harmless. That’s a beautiful thing for the world to see.

Remember in Deuteronomy 4, God gave Israel such laws that the nations are supposed to see them and marvel and see that’s great and wonderful. We want to be like that. But instead, by the time Christ comes, they become so poor the time of the prophets as well that people don’t want to be like them at all. So they’re hypocrites. They don’t open the kingdom of heaven. They don’t protect widows rather they devour widows’ houses.

Verse 16, woe to you blind guides who say whoever swears to the temple is nothing. So here he’s saying you’re supposed to be a guide. It’s not that you’re he’s not rebuking them for the pride of thinking that they were guides. God had given Israel to the nations to be a guide, but they weren’t guiding people into truth. They were teaching the opposite. That the temple, the one who dwells in the temple that swear by him means nothing. They were hypocrites. In other words, hypocrites.

Verse 24. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. And again, he says in verse 20, what is that? Verse 24, blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. You were supposed to guide the nations by loving mercy and justice. And yet you didn’t. You turned it into just your you know your exact nature about the tithing, which he says you should have done that. It’s good you did that, but you shouldn’t have neglected the weight of your matters. Blind guides.

So they’re hypocrites. Then he says in verse 25, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you’re full of extortion.” Oh, you don’t swear anymore. You don’t say GD or JC this that or the other thing. No, you don’t do that. You’ve cleaned up the exterior of the cup, but that’s it. You’re a hypocrite because really your actions don’t bear any witness to the truth of who Yahweh is to the nations.

Again, verse 27, scribes and Pharisees. Woe to you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you’re full of hypocrisy.

So God, you know, Jesus condemns the Pharisees primarily as hypocrites. Hypocrisy is the great sin that he convicts them of. And this is why at the conclusion of this in verse 32 and 33, he refers to them as serpents, brood of vipers. A hypocrite, someone who carries God’s name, who’s been baptized and doesn’t live out that baptismal name in what he does to the waiting, watching world around you, that person is instead not a son of God. That person is a son of the serpent, a brood of vipers.

Romans 2:17-24. Turn to Romans 2. This is the same thing that’s happening in Romans 2. We tend to get confused about this. We somehow take Romans 2 and think that the whole point of Romans 2 is just that everybody’s sinful. The Jews are sinful just like the Gentiles are sinful. Well, that’s part of it. Of course, part of what Paul is doing in Romans is showing that just like the Gentiles, the Jews also are children of Adam. They sin and they need a savior. But that’s not all he’s saying in chapter 2:17.

He says, “Indeed, you are called a Jew. You rest on the law. You make your boast in God, and you know his will and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.

Is that bad? Is he saying you shouldn’t think about all those things? Is he saying that you’re boastful and prideful because you think you’re a light to the nations? I don’t think so. He’s reminding them of what indeed they were supposed to do. They claimed these things. The problem was not in the claim. The problem was, as he goes on to say here, You rob temples. You don’t tell the truth. You’re not acting out the truth of these things.

This is who they were called to be. We make our boast in God, right? It’s not in ourselves. We boast in God. We love the God we serve. And we know he’s the only source of life to the world. We know his will. That’s right. And the guy outside in darkness, he doesn’t know God. He knows something about God, but he doesn’t know as much as we do because we’ve been instructed in the scriptures. We know the will of God in matters. We know about restitution and those sorts of things. He doesn’t know that.

We approve the things that are excellent being instructed out of the law. Yeah, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Just like the Jews, we’re true Jews and we understand that. We understand that the law instructs us in good things and excellent things. Yeah, that’s right. We’re confident that we are a guide to the blind. Yes, I am confident knowing that God has called his church and Christians to be a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness.

In fact, what Paul says in other places, right? We talk to our kids about it all the time. Do all things without grumbling and disputing, blameless and harmless. You may be sons of God, shining as lights in the midst of a darkened world. We take the light. We’re lightbearers to the world. Yeah, that’s us. We’re the same thing. We’re confident. We’re supposed to be a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish.

Yes, the Gentiles have the non-Christians have foolishly rejected God. We’re an instructor to them. No, that’s foolish. It’s foolish of you to want to you know, marry somebody of the same sex. I know you think it’s a good thing. You’ve been taught that, but you know, it’s really not a good thing for you. It’s foolishness. We’re an instructor to you about that from the word of God. Not because we hate people, but because we know it’s foolish and it’s going to be bad for them.

Yeah, we instruct the foolish of the truth of God’s word. The question is though, we who teach others, do we also sin in these very things that we teach others of? That’s what he condemns the Jews for in Romans 2. The point is not that they shouldn’t have thought of themselves in that way. The point is they didn’t do it. The point is they’re hypocrites. The point is they weren’t living out their lives as guideposts to the Lord Jesus Christ, to Messiah, who’s the source of life and truthfulness.

What God hated about the Jews at this stage in history was their hypocrisy, was their violation of the third word the third commandment. He says in Romans 3:1 and 2 what advantage then had the Jew or what is the profit of circumcision much in every way he doesn’t say it was stupid he had no advantage he had lots of advantages chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God to us the church of Jesus Christ the same thing’s true to we have been committed with the oracles of God the instruction the word of God has been entrusted to us committed to us.

Not so that we can just hang out and do a dog paddle and get to heaven, but so that we can take that word to the world, rescue people who are doing some of the most stupid things that you’d ever want to do to somebody or to some to yourself or somebody else thinking that it’s fun. We want to rescue people who are drowning, right? We want to be proper lights in darkness, not being hypocrites, not just dog paddling through, not just making sure we’re okay and forgetting the world that lies around us.

The very notion of the church today that thinks we’re just to do anything in the world is polishing brass on a sinking ship. That is the notion of hypocrisy in the Jewish church that Jesus came to destroy, to bring severe judgment upon. That’s the sort of bearing God’s name in vanity, taking his name upon us emptily and falsely actually that God says will leave us desolate as well. God hates hypocrisy.

John 14:9 Jesus says, “Have I been with you so long and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” When they saw Jesus, they saw the character of God. And when they see little Christians, little Christs, little anointed ones, you and me, they’re supposed to see the character of Jesus, the character of the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God has given us the third person of the trinity so that we can have full orbed witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ so that we don’t have an empty witness. Now it’s hard. I know it’s hard. We don’t like people that dislike us and we know that so often when we try to talk about Christ, we do it in such a way as to sound more like the hypocrites of Judaism than Christians. It’s not easy. We have to learn to get good at it, but it’s a task we must do.

It’s been made even more difficult because of laws. There was a law passed, I don’t remember, three or five years ago in the Oregon legislature, a union law, and it says that if you’re a manager in a business, you can’t make your employees hear things about Christ or about religion. Says religion specifically. David H. reminded me of this. We were talking last week, him and Flynn A. and I, and he said he was at a coffee shop and there were a couple there was some people sitting around talking and seem to be obviously counterculture, you know, social worker sort of types.

I mean, not in a they’re good social workers, but you know, kind of statist. And one of the women was saying to the other woman, “Did you hear how he’s used the word church? He’s not supposed to do that.” Talking about wherever it was they were working. They’re right. The law has been passed that says that if you’ve got a Christian business, for instance, and you say, “I want to obey the third word. I want to obey the third commandment. I want to have an explicitly Christian business.” Which means I’m probably going to be talking about Jesus in the course of the day or about his scriptures or about the truth of God’s word. I want to bring light to my workplace. You’re forbidden to do that. That’s against the law because it’s against it’s impinging on the rights of those that you’ve hired.

So, you’ve got a law prohibiting you from actively engaging in obeying the third commandment. What are you going to do? Obey God or man?

So, it’s difficult. It’s difficult. Sociologically, it’s difficult because we haven’t been doing a very good job. We’re not practiced at it. It’s difficult because the world really has gotten to the place where it doesn’t want to hear it in the public arena. But, all those things aside, the Lord God says it is of the very nature of who we are as Christians. We have the spirit of God dwelling in us to break sinful patterns of the past and establish positive patterns for the future.

God gives us his spirit explicitly for this reason, so that we can live out our lives as examples of the kind of God it is that we serve and who Jesus is, what his word brings. To bring the knowledge of the word to those who are foolish, to bring light to those who are in darkness, to bring a cup of water in Christ’s name to those who are thirsting to death. That’s our very calling in life. That’s who we are.

The third commandment is about what it’s all about. The first and second commandment lead up to the third. We know who we’re worshiping. We know we’re not exalting some power or force in the world. We know that the mediation of God’s knowledge to us is only through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And we know that those things have been established to the end that we might now be spirit empowered witnesses of the truth of God.

What will we do this week when the when the rub comes, when the opportunity comes, we want to we’re pleased, we’re happy about something, we want to praise God for it in the workplace or in our recreation, whatever it is. Will we bite our tongues? Will we live our lives in a way that’s disobedient to God’s law. Will we rob temples? Will we do things that are improper, not being good stewards of our time, etc., and bear a false witness of the God we serve?

Will we close our mouths? God says if we do that, we draw back to death. The name of God is his presence with us. His presence is life. God hates it when we say one thing and do another. We show people God. That’s our God. That’s our job. That’s about all there is. We show people God. We do this by the Holy Spirit. The third word requires holiness in us then in all that we do and say.

To carry God’s name is results from being in union with Jesus Christ. We are anointed messiahs having received of the same spirit who anointed Jesus as Messiah. We are little Christs. As is often said, we take a knowledge of God to the people whom we live in the context of. May the spirit of God empower us this week to bear a full witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in all we do and say.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. We thank you that the spirit anointed the Savior and he’s anointed us as well. We pray for William James that you would raise him up, Lord God, to be a faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. And may we remember our baptisms today. You’re placing your name upon us. May we carry that name proudly, diligently, joyfully into our world this week. In his name we ask it. Amen.