Dennis Tuuri

# The Ring of Fire: The Eighth Commandment (Part Seven)

For the ability to sing to praise his name in such beautiful ways. Today we’ll have our seventh and concluding sermon on the eighth commandment, which is “You shall not steal.” The sermon text is found in Leviticus chapter 19.

One of our methods that we’ve been following in this series on the Ten Words is to, in addition to expositing the Word itself found in Deuteronomy 5, we’ve also looked at portions of the rest of the book of Deuteronomy—Moses’ sermon as he goes through the Ten Words. We did that last week on the eighth word, and we also are looking at Leviticus 19 for another point of triangulation on the meaning of these words. So today’s sermon text is verses 11 and 12 of Leviticus 19.

Please stand for the reading of God’s Word. Leviticus 19:11-12.

“You shall not steal. You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the beauty of your law to us. We thank you for those portions of it that apply to us today, this side of the coming together of Jew and Gentile in the person and work of Jesus our Savior. Bless us now as we consider once more how we’re to live as your people. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So the basic idea of today’s sermon comes from this line in a Johnny Cash song: “I fell into a burning ring of fire.” On the front of your orders of worship there’s a depiction of a ring of fire—somebody in the ring of fire—and these verses, I think, will show us when we look at them in detail this kind of progression that can happen: beginning with a desire for something that’s not properly ours and so this progression—what we end up doing is profaning the name of God, and then what that means for us is what we want to talk about from Leviticus 19.

So Leviticus 19 shows us a progression of sins, of falling into a ring of fire into the judgment of God. But this is the eighth and concluding sermon in this series. We began by stressing the need for biblical property—the need to actually build properly, accumulate property that we exercise proper dominion or stewardship over. It’s not normally thought of in terms of the application of the eighth word, but I think it’s very important to it.

We then talked about a warning against robbing God by not paying his tithe. We talked about restitution as the basic biblical remedy for theft—a multiple restitution. And that shows that the whole eschatological movement of the world is that God isn’t just restoring things to what they were. He’s always improving things. So he’s moving the world forward. Jesus Christ came to effect the restoration of all things, and that restitution is linked to this idea of restitution.

Adam’s first sin was stealing something, and God is now restituting the fallen world through those who are redeemed through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We then spent two sermons talking about the greatest threat to these biblical truths in our time today—at least I think it is—which is the so-called idea of social justice. And while there’s a biblical way of looking at social justice, there’s a secular socialistic way that is very dominant in our time. So we spent two weeks on that.

And then we talked about last week—Moses’ sermon portion later in the book of Deuteronomy—where we see that this idea of stealing has its primary reference, its initial reference, to stealing liberty, to stealing men’s freedom, and in actually stealing men themselves. So those are some of the things we’ve talked about.

If you look at your handout today, you’ll see that on the second page there’s an outline. Page two actually is what we’ll look at in a couple of minutes—the context for the sermon text. Page three we won’t really be speaking of. It’s an outline of Leviticus 19, which I’ve given you before. Then the next page is the Westminster Confession of Faith questions and answers on the eighth word. And then there’s the coloring picture at the end.

By the way, kids, if you want to know what that’s about—these are the best pictures I could come up with. The idea is we’re not just to avoid enslaving men. Don’t steal freedom. But our job as Christians is to free men from sin. And today, if we think of this metaphor of falling into a ring of fire—into increasing levels of sinfulness—the other way to think of it is we entangle ourselves in a web of sin.

And in the Hobbit—not the Lord of the Rings, but the Hobbit—Bilbo rescues dwarves who have been attacked by a giant spider and they have a web spun around them, right? And so these are two pictures of dwarves entangled. They’ve lost freedom or liberty. And the Lord Jesus Christ comes and he uses the sword of the Spirit to cut away the chains, the spider webs, the tanglements of sin that so easily surround us and enslave us.

James 1 says this: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.”

Now that is the spirit of our age. We live in a time when the self is primary, or even the only thing that people really are supposed to think about is yourself and how to fulfill yourself—”free to be me.” And the idea of the self, these really starting with Freud onward, has become these urges or desires we have, and what men see today as a good thing is giving vent to those urges and desires to find out who the real you is. So these lustful, inordinate desires—not for God but for other things. In the case of theft, for property or even human slaves—this lust, when we give into it the way our culture is training people to do, becomes sin, and sin’s end is death. And so James also shows us this kind of falling into the burning ring of fire, and the end result of that is God’s judgments.

Now the next and the last page are these Westminster Confession questions, and take a look at those for just a couple of minutes. You’ll see many of the things we’ve talked about here. “What are the duties required of the eighth commandment?” The duties are truth. So today we’ll talk about deception, faithfulness and justice in contracts and commerce between man and man, restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owners thereof. And we talked about restitution. Giving and lending freely. We see, and we’ll see it again today, that charity is a big part—the extension of what God gives us in terms of blessings to others according to our abilities and the necessities of others.

Moderation of our judgments, wills, and affections concerning worldly goods. And so we’re not supposed to give way to our desires and urges. We’re supposed to see the transcendent value of God as expressed in his Word, and that’s where our self will find its proper fulfillment and joy. And so this comes about through moderation of our things—a provident care and study. Now listen to this: “To get, keep, use, and dispose these things which are necessary and convenient for this—for the sustentation, whatever that means, of our nature and suitable to our condition.”

So the Westminster divines saw what we started with: that inherent in the eighth commandment is the idea that we’re supposed to get property and things. But because God has given us this job of exercising dominion over the world, and history is about God taking away stewardship from the unrighteous and giving those things to the righteous, that’s acknowledged in the Westminster divines, and that’s why we started there. It’s so common in Christian churches to disdain property. It’s kind of a gnostic idea. But here in the Westminster divines and the Westminster Confession of Faith—I’m sorry, the Westminster Larger Catechism. This isn’t from the Confession. It’s the Larger Catechism—that acknowledges what we taught in our first sermon on this: a lawful calling.

They see that as implicit in the eighth commandment—a lawful calling. The elders of this church, in our constitution, are supposed to encourage people of the church to a lawful calling and diligence in it, coming right out of this application of the eighth word. So, you know, God leaves us here for a reason, and that reason is also to have a holy calling for him and to exercise diligence in it. And then, toward the end: “To procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others as well as our own.”

So not just ourselves, but others’ wealth. We’re supposed to try to help them attain that as well.

Now, if you look down then: “What are the sins prohibited?” Or “What are the actions—the sins prohibited?” In Question 142, after the first set of references, are theft, robbery, man-stealing. Man-stealing we talked about last week. And in today’s text, it’s going to talk about theft and robbery. You say, “Well, isn’t that repeating the same thing?” No.

Stealing something—and we’ll talk about this more in a minute—has the idea of secrecy or deceit to it. Robbing—that particular word, both in our language and the particular Hebrew words that are used in our text—robbing means ripping something off, taking it by violent force. And so, either one of those—to steal by deceit, deceptively with lies, etc., or outright armed robbery, because they’re robbing things violently, to rip something off from somebody—are prohibited. And then man-stealing.

So you see the things that we’ve talked about in our sermons are really found if we just knew our—if your family uses the Westminster Catechism. If you know the catechism, you have this wonderful summation of duties and things that are forbidden by the Ten Commandments, and we see that really much of what we’ve said—if we know this particular catechism—then we know that this is helpful to us. You know, most of what we’ve already talked about for the last seven weeks is okay.

So I would add a few other things that we could make by way of specifications if we wanted to make lists like the Westminster divines did, and this will be the last thing I say before we actually look at the text. But there are some other lists I want to get your attention. So, this again in Leviticus 19, it’s going to say, “Don’t steal things,” and it’s easy at that point to think, “Well, we’re not those that steal anything.” But let me just help you to think through this.

If we don’t pay our bills in a timely fashion, there’s a sense in which we’re stealing that money for a period of time from the one we owe the money to. Okay. So we could add to the Westminster divines things that are prohibited: not paying your bills on time as a practical application.

How about using unemployment money as a vacation? You know, the first portion of unemployment is an insurance program paid into by you and your wages. But most of unemployment is now paid through taxation of everybody through federal extensions. And people today are tempted to use that first part of their unemployment money as a vacation, but that’s not the point. It specifically requires you to be looking for work. I know it’s hard, but if you use it for vacation, that’s stealing.

Children taking cookies out of the jar when mom said, “Don’t have a cookie.” And if we look at today’s text, this progression—you know, kid sneaks a cookie. “Did you have a cookie?” “No, I didn’t have a cookie.” “No, I swear, mommy, I really didn’t have a cookie.” And when they do that—now I know it’s a little bit of an exaggeration for effect—but when they do that, our text says to us this is profaning the name of God, and we’ll see what happens to those that profane the name of God in a couple of minutes.

So taking things—cookies out of the jar. How about not returning borrowed things? Borrow something from somebody we don’t return it. It becomes part of our possessions. Not returning borrowed things. Not providing gleanable resources. Right. What we’re supposed to do. It’s part of that requirement as we looked in Deuteronomy, Moses’ sermon—the extension of help to others.

Teaching our children from their earliest age what this is about: we had one of our kids in the supermarket, took a pack of gum, went out the door—they had stolen the gum—and so what do we do now? You take it back. And we have always said that people should pay restitution—multiple restitution. So we wanted our daughter to pay double restitution for this pack of gum. Well, the store clerks, they want nothing of that. “Oh, just forget it. Oh, what’s the big deal?” You know, because really, it’s not their possession. Number one, the store clerk is just working for a wage. But you know, to not pay restitution, double restitution when you—well, actually, we’ll see in a couple of minutes maybe it shouldn’t have been quite double—but not to pay restitution even on the part of our children when they’re young is teaching them really a violation of the eighth word. It’s not teaching them the full intent of the eighth commandment.

Kids borrowing stuff from other members of the family without asking. Everything has a steward assigned to it. And even in the family, you know, if it’s your brother’s socks, it’s your brother’s socks. And if you take them, you know, he doesn’t have ultimate ownership, but if you take those away from that steward who has gotten those socks from wherever he got them without his asking for his permission to borrow them—that’s, I think, a violation of the eighth word.

Now you say, “Geez, Tuuri, you’re being so nitpicky.” Well, it’s a big deal. And we live in a culture now that doesn’t teach these things anymore—where everything is just sort of common goods and nobody’s really much concerned over who’s taking care of anything. And as a result, nothing’s being taken care of very well. Things are important. God has given us stewardship over things to advance his kingdom. And when we just sort of muck it all up and say, “Well, who cares, in our families?” then we’re raising kids to be socialists. That’s sort of what we’re doing when we let that go on in the home.

Being late to work. I mean, unless you’re salaried, an hourly employee, and you’re not there when they want you to be there—stealing longer breaks than you’re really allowed to take, you know, theft at the place of business.

The Lord’s Day. You know, I believe that if you don’t set aside this day, you’re stealing this day from God. This is a special day that’s set apart to correct our culture’s idea that we just give in to whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. God gives us a discipline. And what a discipline. We get to stop. We get to get together. We get to sing. We get to have food together. We get to relax in the afternoons and evenings. I know some people have to work, but that’s the sort of discipline. It’s hard to imagine it as a discipline, but it’s the sort of discipline that God says will help us avoid the inordinate desires and giving into them whenever we want to.

And we steal this day from God. We profane the day. And by profaning the day, we can profane God. Stealing respect from the agent or from your equals. And I know this is going to be a little controversial, but I know I’m turning into an old curmudgeon, but when I’m having a conversation with a young person and they have their phone and they’re doing this—”Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah.”—you know, I don’t like that. Now, maybe it’s just me. But, you know, I think that people should think, young people should think about, and I guess older people can do it too. You should think about: Are you stealing the due respect you owe to the person you’re talking to?

And young people, particularly when you’re around older people—older people are supposed to be seen with a degree of respect. I’ve been saying this, by the way, before I was old. So this isn’t a self-serving statement. It’s what the Bible says. We’re supposed to admire and respect the white-headed ones.

How about this one? If our job is not to enslave people and actually to free them, then in some ways it can be said to be a violation of the eighth word when we don’t give people the key to the chains that are around them—and the key to the lock of it, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we leave them in the spiderweb instead of being in union with Christ, those that use the sword of the Spirit to free them from those webs—we’re violating a lot of things, but we’re violating the eighth word. We’re leaving them in enslavement.

And this also is true of people that are already Christians who we know that sins have enslaved them and are ruining their effectiveness. It’s our obligation in terms of the eighth commandment to bring the sword of the Spirit into that and to free people.

How about this one? We’re a great Dominion church. People like to work and exercise. That’s good. But you know, when you do that, you run the risk of stealing time from your family and children. You have an obligation to nourish the family, to oversee it. You have an obligation to spend time with your family. And I know you men don’t like doing it because we don’t know what we’re doing and we feel a lot more competent at work. And when you come home, the problems you face in the context of raising kids—believe me, I understand this—are much more complicated and difficult, frustrating than what you go through at work typically. But it doesn’t make any difference. God says you owe them leadership. You owe them presence. And when you don’t do that, you are stealing from God. And when you make excuses for stealing from God in that way, then you move toward this ring of fire, the profanation of God’s very name.

Let’s now look at those texts. And first of all, I want to look at the context for these two verses we read. Now, again, here on your outline, I’ve got printed out the context for these verses. And the verses themselves—this is on page two of your handout. This page here. And you’ll see that in the middle are the actual text we want to talk about, but there’s some context for it beforehand.

And the context, first of all, is verses 5 to 10. And they have to do with charity again, right? Verses 5 to 10 talk about the peace offerings—God gives us grace and how we’re supposed to partake of the peace offerings. And then right after that, remember that in Leviticus 19, these markers to sections are these phrases: “I am the Lord your God” or “I am the Lord.” And you see in bold there in verse 10: “I am the Lord your God.”

This whole section is a section. So it moves immediately from the right way to eat the holy meal—ultimately the Lord’s Supper. That’s what it’s pointing to. To what? Verse 9: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to the edge. Neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest, and you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God.”

Again, language that always reminds us of the table. God gives us grace and we’re to extend that grace. Charity is the immediate context for this prohibition against theft. And we’ve seen this in Deuteronomy and in another text where charity is bound up with the eighth word or closely aligned to it.

We rob God when we don’t pay our tithe. That’s obvious. But we also rob—we steal, as it were. We’re guilty of theft and injustice when we’re not given to charity. Given to charity. This is who we’re supposed to be as Christians. We’ve been given grace by God. We’re to extend it to others. Charity is not the poor’s right, ultimately, but it is God’s requirement of us. Okay? So it’s not an entitlement in that sense. It is a requirement that God has put upon his people to help the poor.

And there are certain conditions for all of that. The man won’t work. He’s not supposed to eat. But in general, we have this charitable attitude. God’s possessions is what we always have. And God wants us to be like him. He wants us to image him. He wants us to be his presence in the world. And his presence is a gracious, salvific presence. And we’re supposed to be gracious in giving to others in charity. Community life has a God-centered focus, as it were.

And the context for the eighth commandment is always community—and either extending community or sinning against community. God requires us to help the needy, and he particularly requires the people who are wealthy or rich to help the needy. And as a result of that, he blesses them. Now, if you’re needy, you have to let people help you. I’ve talked about this before, but I want to say it again.

The Bible makes clear there’s this thing—you know, the most fulfillment most people find in life, if you ask them, I think this is true probably for everybody in this room: the thing that brings you more joy than anything else in life, or at least one of the highest joys, is helping somebody. And so, but people who need help, they’re reticent to ask. They don’t want to be an imposition or a burden. But when you do that, you’re depriving somebody of the thing that, as Christians at least, we most want to do. It is our heart to want to help people out of tough spots and to encourage them and to be charitable toward them. Isn’t that, of course, true? So don’t, you know, hold back if you need help or charity.

Charity is the immediate context on one end of the verses that are before us here. On the other end, there is oppression. Look down at verse 13. “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him.”

See, now this is oppression—you know, which means to beat somebody down or to take advantage of them. And now we have the word “rob.” In verse 11, it’s “steal,” which implies deceit. Verse 13, dealing with oppression, is “robbery,” where you just rip people off. You rip it off them. And actually the word has that kind of literal connotation to it: to rip somebody off. So this is oppression. Making another person’s life harder through sin. Okay. And so this root of oppression means to trample somebody down.

Oppression by force, first of all, as I said, to rip somebody off, right? To rob somebody and not to steal from them is oppression. And that’s the so there’s a continuation, as it were, in this next section. I say next section because—see at the end of verse 12, “I am the Lord” in bold. You see that in verse 12: “I am the Lord.” So these two verses are a section, but the next section sort of picks up again with the same theme of the eighth commandment in terms of oppression and outright theft.

So first, by force. Or then, by a lack of consideration. “The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning.” We saw this in Deuteronomy as well. So a lack of consideration. There are some jobs, you know, our Savior in Matthew 20:8 uses the vineyard example and how a guy can pay people in the vineyard what he wants to pay them. But in the parable, he assumes that at the end of the day is when the wages are distributed—every day. And so fieldwork is generally seen as being paid daily, and it’s because fieldwork is the least paying of jobs, and those people tend to need the money to go home and get food for dinner that night. They’re going hand-to-mouth daily, and a lack of consideration, from them using accounting practices in a way that diminishes the life of your servant instead of meeting his needs, is prohibited here and is one of the contexts that directly follows on to this eighth word.

Next, by their absence. This is interesting. “You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the Lord.” So, you know, okay, you say, “Well, I never cursed a deaf person, and I never put a blind person out of the way.” Maybe you have.

The blind person can’t see the way. We’re supposed to help people find the way. And when we misdirect people from their way, we do what this case law refers to in the blind person scenario. It’s an obligation on us to show people the correct way to walk. And when we don’t do that, when we tell them the incorrect way, we’ve put a stumbling block in front of a blind person. You see, by way of application, all false instruction is prohibited by this particular case law. We have an obligation to increase men’s life by showing them proper ways and not improper ways.

Don’t curse the deaf. To speak something about a person that person can’t hear. That’s negative, right? That’s what’s going on. The deaf guy can’t hear it. You’re going to curse him. You’re going to say something bad about him. He can’t hear it. Now, when do we ever do that? Well, we do it all the time. You’re not here. I’m at some place away from here and I talk about you in a bad way. That’s what this case is referring to as well. Don’t let yourself off the hook. We have an obligation not to oppress people right by their absence and using our speech inappropriately.

Whenever we slander, whenever we talk about people in a negative way, cursing them—okay, that’s a violation of this word, and it’s part of this whole stuff related to the eighth commandment and oppression and robbery.

Next is injustice, in verse 15. “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” Now, this is an important verse in terms of social justice.

Again, what it says is there’s to be no class justice. You know, if we called social justice “class justice,” it’d be more obvious what’s going on there. And you certainly can’t defer to the rich, but you also can’t defer to the poor. The Maccabean and other Jewish authorities, they would make people when they went to court have the same clothes on as they’re sitting there before the judge. You know, we’ve got “justice is blind,” right? And the way we do it is usually the defense attorney will have you put a suit on because that’s kind of the common dress that we have today. We sort of do the same thing, but it’s all based upon this.

And to properly not oppress people is to engage in proper biblical justice—not man’s will and class justice, but God’s will. Quoting from R.J. Rushdoony here: “The modern beliefs in class justice, racial justice, economic justice and so on are all perversions of justice and law. They enthrone man’s will as law. Class justice is an untenable doctrine. But it is now the basic doctrine of socialism in all forms and always evil. Justice is to be done to all because justice is not a class doctrine but God’s nature and his requirement.”

Okay. So oppression through justice, or by a failure of direct dealing. And we’ve talked about this in recent sermons, so I won’t go into these in detail. But that’s the last one: when we don’t deal honestly with people. Instead, we talk about them behind their back. We get a hatred in our heart for them. And this text says we’re taking away their life. We’re stealing their life. We’re enslaving them again. We’re violating the eighth word when we don’t have direct dealing with people.

The corrective to all this is the fear of God. He says, “Look, you’re doing things that people won’t see—slandering, whatever it is, having partiality in your heart toward a poor man or toward a rich man.” But the corrective is fear God, right? That’s what it says to do here. We’re to fear God. Verse 14: “You shall not curse the deaf, put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God. He sees. He hears everything.”

And so the fear of God is essential to our avoiding violations of the eighth word.

All right. Now let’s get to the verse itself. Number two on your outline: the progression into the ring of fire. And there is this stealing first. I’ve always sort of showed us what’s happening here.

So now we’re going to deal directly with verses 11 and 12. And if you look at that text either in your Bibles or in the handout, verse 11: “You shall not steal.” Okay. And as I said, that is primarily deception. “You shall not deal falsely.”

So we’ll talk about that in a minute. But first, don’t steal, which is to take another’s goods without consent or knowledge. And as I said, the emphasis is normally on secrecy. Okay. Absalom stole the people’s heart. 2 Samuel 15. What does he do? David’s having a hard time getting people to court on time and meeting out justice. The people are kind of complaining about it. Absalom goes around and he says, “Well, you know, I could really—I know it’s really tough. I’m so sympathetic with you. I’m so compassionate with you. I know it’s kind of tough. David isn’t doing that great a job.” And what he does is he’s building revolution and rebellion—which is as sorcery the Bible says—but he does it by stealing. And this is the specific phrase that’s given to us in 2 Samuel. He’s stealing men’s hearts, 2 Samuel 15. And he’s doing it covertly, right? He’s getting them to like him.

And so that’s the idea here—is the beginning of this list is don’t steal, and this is again kind of the beginning of a process.

And the second word is to not deal falsely. And here I’ve got “shine on.” Right? If robbing is ripping people off, dealing falsely is shining people on. You know, “Oh, I really like you.” It’s either feigned respect for authority or fawningness over those who are inferior. It’s this kind of representing who you are in a way that doesn’t really represent your heart attitude toward that particular people. So it has that connotation to it.

You know, Joab was a smart guy and he dealt falsely with Amassa. He goes up to him and he kisses him. “Oh, how are you doing?” And he gives him the embrace and stuff like shaking hands today. And Amassa doesn’t see that in his other hand—the one that’s not embracing him—there’s the dagger. So he’s dealing falsely. He’s blessing him with his mouth and he’s in the process of murdering with him. Sound familiar? That’s Judas with Jesus in the garden.

And that’s what we do a lot of times. We steal something deceptively. We pretend that we’re okay with the person, with the owner of it. And we actually try to, you know, assure them of what we’re doing is right. And we deal falsely when we do this.

And then third, we actually lie. The word “lie” means to say something that has no basis in truth. Okay? So it’s counterstating reality. But the idea is it’s empty words. And in the Psalms, you get a lot of this: vanity and lying words. And we wonder why those two are put together. Well, it’s because lying, that particular Hebrew word, has the connotation of having nothing in substance. So now you tell your neighbor something else about what you stole from. You make up a story is the idea. And so you lie about it, right? And you just don’t tell the truth.

And what you say doesn’t have a basis in reality. Ephesians, of course, tells us to speak the truth to one another—speak reality. Reality, God’s reality, not the falsehood or lie, the emptiness. Idols in the Bible, this same word is applied to them. They’re lies because there’s nothing to them. They’re nothings. And a lie is a nothing. It’s not—it doesn’t represent reality.

And then the last step in this progression is swearing falsely. So you move from wanting something. You then lie about whether you took it or not. Or first of all, you deal falsely by trying to pretend you’ve got relationship with the person and like him. You lie about the fact of whether you stole it, and then you’ll even say, “I swear to God I didn’t take it.” And now you’ve sworn falsely before God. And the end result of this progression is profaning God’s name.

Right? Don’t steal. Don’t deal falsely. Don’t lie. Don’t swear by my name falsely. And so profane the name of your God. The end result, the ring of fire that we fall into, is the profanation of God’s name. That means to diminish, to make unclean, somehow, the name of God, which is him himself, his very person.

Now, in Proverbs 30:9, think of this in terms of class justice. Agur says, “Don’t let me be rich or don’t let me be poor, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or listen now, lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” He connects this stealing—the violation of the eighth word—to profaning the name of God. And he says even if I’m poor, if I steal, I’m profaning the name of God. So theft is tied to the profanation of God’s name, even theft as in lay misery rob or whatever it is that seems to be justified by a kind of abject poverty.

Still, Agur, the wisdom of Proverbs, tells us that even then, when we steal, even if we’re hungry, it profanes the name of the Lord. We rely upon him, not our own mechanisms, to protect who we are.

In Amos 2:7, “Those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, turn aside the way of the afflicted. A man and his father go into the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned.” And don’t stop at the sexual sin. It’s connected to the oppression of the poor. The oppression of the poor, the violation of the eighth word, produces the profanation of God’s very name.

The profanation of God’s very name. The end result of this is God’s judgment. Of course, these same words are found in Leviticus 6:1-7. We won’t look at those, but they’re these same words for steal and lie and swear falsely are found there. And there it’s required that an atonement be made because this is great sin—the violation of the eighth word.

The conclusion of this whole ethics section of Leviticus is 22. Chapter 23 begins a whole new section of Leviticus. The conclusion is this in verses 31-33: “You shall keep my commandments—that’s to guard them, preserve them, keep them going—and do them. I am the Lord. And you shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel. I am the Lord, who sanctifies you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord.”

God has delivered us and redeemed us in Jesus Christ. And he doesn’t want us to profane his name by a violation of his commandments, including and predominantly here, the eighth word. To violate the eighth word, to fall in, is to fall into the ring of fire, to get us going in a whole sequence of events. One little lie leads to another. Right. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,” Sir Walter Scott.

And that’s what’s going on here. There’s a progression. “I fell into a burning ring of fire.” I begin with the simple appropriation of something—stealing the cookie that mom and dad said I couldn’t take. And before I know it, I’m falling into the ring of fire by that violation. Before I know it, I’m lying to them. I’m even swearing that I didn’t do the thing that they say that I did. And the end result is what I’m doing is I’m profaning the name of God himself.

He takes that very seriously. You know, people don’t like the name of the family being hurt by bad behavior on the part of the kids. Well, that’s okay. But the name of God, of course, is even more important. And believe me, God doesn’t like it when we claim the name of Christian and don’t act like it.

The end result is fire itself—a place with sorcerers and adulterers. Malachi 3:5 says, “Listen, then I will draw near to you in judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.”

We place ourselves with sorcerers and adulterers when we do these relatively benign acts, so we think of them in this culture, of small theft, small lies, and swearing by the name of God. When we profane his name, we put ourselves in a position of judgment alongside adulterers and sorcerers.

We lead to excommunication. Psalm 24:4 says, “If you swear falsely, you shouldn’t get in the door to worship.” That’s what Psalm 24 says. Jeremiah 7 says the same thing. Remember Jeremiah 7: “Don’t come to the temple in these states. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that I have not known? If you’re going to steal and swear falsely, don’t come. You’re going to be turned away at the door. You’re going to be excommunicated if you don’t repent for that.”

Leviticus 20:3: “I myself—the church won’t do it. God will. I will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people. Why? Because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.” Now there’s a charge. They profaned his name, and therefore he’s going to cut them off from amongst his people. The specification is giving our children to the state. That’s what Molech worship was—state worship.

But you see, stealing is another specification for the same crime of profaning God’s name, as Proverbs 30 makes quite clear. So you see, we put ourselves with those who would give their children over to the state, and we give ourselves over to a group of people that God says he will excommunicate if we don’t.

The end result of this is a devouring curse. Zechariah 5, listen well. “Then he said to me, ‘This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land. For everyone who steals shall be cleaned out according to what is on one side, and everyone who swears falsely’ —you see the connection—’shall be cleaned out according to what is on the other side. I will send it out,’ declares the Lord of Hosts. ‘It shall enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely by my name, and it shall remain in his house and consume it, both timber and stones.’”

To violate the eighth word and to fail to come to repentance for it is to fall into the profanation of God’s name and to bring ourselves the curse from God that devours our house.

There was an old song when I was a kid—”Chipping Away.” Chipping at the mansion of love. George is probably the only guy that knows the song in this whole church. But the chorus, this is a popular song, a top 20 song. And the thing was, “You tell a little lie, you make your baby cry, you cheat a little bit, you quarrel over it, and one day you’re going to discover that one little wrong leads to another. Chip, chipping away, chipping at the mansion of love.”

The Body of Christ is the mansion of love. And our homes represent a mansion of love. And when we do these seemingly small things of counterstating the truth in order to conceal a theft, we’re chipping away at the mansion of love. We’re falling into the ring of fire. We’re profaning God’s name. And we’re bringing upon ourselves and our house a terrible, devouring curse.

The corrective is the primacy of God’s name. What does God’s name mean to you? Profaning God’s name. Well, what about God’s name? Is it important? It’s the only important thing. God has called us specifically to be portrayers of his name, his person, his character, to this world. And when we don’t do that, we’ve profaned his name and judgments come.

Matthew Henry said that this text tells us to maintain a very reverent regard to the sacred name of God. A very reverent regard to the sacred name of God. I don’t think this is common fare in evangelicalism today, in Reformed circles today, or maybe even in this church today. A very reverent regard for the name of God, for the name that you bear as Christians, for the name of Christ.

And yet the scriptures, Ezekiel, various citations. He says, “God said, ‘I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt, but I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they live.’” God says that the reason he redeemed his people out of Egypt was not for their sake, first and foremost. It was for the sake of his very name. That’s why he did it.

He said, “God made you a Christian, first and foremost, in terms of purpose and reason and goal, that his name would be honored and held up in a right regard for it. Might be seen in the context of the nations round about.” God says that his name, in Ezekiel 20:13 and 14, he says, “But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations. Then in verse 22, but I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations.”

Here he’s talking about what happens in the wilderness after he redeems them. And they profane my Sabbaths, he says in this section of Ezekiel, and I bring judgments upon them. I was going to destroy them. But once more, grace prevails for the sake of God’s name. That’s the reason.

Ezekiel 36, verse 18: “I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they had shed in the land.” Now, this is talking about—we’re moving through the history of Israel in these sections from Ezekiel—and this is about why he kicks them out of the land and sends them into the dispersion that they would—let’s see—”for the idols with which they have defiled it. I scattered them among the nations. They were dispersed through the countries in accordance with their ways and their deeds. I judged them. But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, and that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the Lord,’ and yet they had to go out of his land.”

So their sin called the judgment: profane God’s name. But God says, “I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came. Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord: it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act to bring them back to the land. It’s not for your sake,’ he says, ‘but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations for which you came. 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.’”

Why did God save us? Why did Jesus come to bring us life from death? To bring us out of judgment back into the promised land. Why does he do it? He does it ultimately for the sake of God’s name. Not for your sake, Christian. Not for your sake, he says here in Ezekiel, but for the sake of my holy name.

Now, what does it mean to us? God’s holy name. Do we have a very reverent, high regard for it? That’s what this text calls us to.

The eighth commandment is seen here as containing elements that are common to the lives of many people, many people in Christian circles, certainly many people in our culture. And God says that the corrective to all of this is a high regard for the holy name of God. Christian, God has called you here today to remind you of your deliverance from sin and death through the wondrous work of our Savior. But he wants you to know from these texts in Ezekiel that he has done this for the sake of his holy name. Honor that name this week.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your deliverance. We thank you for the exhibition of your holy name and character through your grace in spite of judgment. We thank you, Lord God, that you call us today to see that name as central to our very being. Help us, Father, not to be foolish people who have heard the need here to not profane your name through theft, false dealings, lying, and false swearing.

Help us to be those, Lord God, who seek instead the restoration of all things through the proper exercise of stewardship over the created things of the earth. We thank you, Lord God, that we have the high calling this week to honor your name and not to profane it. May we do that by the power of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.