Commandment 3: A Distressing Sign of the Times We Live In

Jessica and I are still working hard, and I am very happy to report that I now have access to some income for us, which will be very important as we move closer to our time of delivery. Ladies and gentlemen, I must confess that it is very humiliating to see the fruits, wrought upon my dear wife, of my negligence with money. I spent many hundreds of dollars when I was living alone in Texas on my own entertainment and selfish pleasure when I could have been storing it away so that my new family could have something to live on, and that fact haunts me every day as my wife and I struggle to make ends meet.



Our post will center on Exodus 20:7, and I think that more than anything else in the Ten Commandments, this verse is an overwhelming indictment of our time. Every age has seen its share of liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers--the street gangs in London during the thirteenth century were just as vicious as the street gangs in New York are in the twenty-first--but no age has ever seen such a universal display of open disrespect toward God in everyday speech as we currently see in Western countries. And once again, at the forefront of this utter departure from the love and fear of the Lord . . . is the church.

I'll be honest, ladies and gentlemen--I struggle with the use of profanity and even with taking the Lord's name in vain. I learned to do both of these things when I was only 11-14 years old, and I became quite skillful at it, to the point that one of my fellow grad students at JMU (who herself was no angel in this regard) actually said to me, "Hey, you watch your language!" It has only been during the past 8 months that I have really been convicted about the effect that my words have on others--and more importantly, the effect that my words have on myself.

The Lord, however, makes his view on our use of language quite clear:

You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

I know that some of you, having read this blog, were expecting a metaphorical sermon pinpointing the extent to which people claim to be Christian in our culture when their words and actions testify that their heart lies somewhere else, and yes, I think that to claim the name of Christ without accepting Him into your heart is a grievous sin (on the order of Ananias and Sapphira--see Acts 5). However, I believe that it is in the use of profanity--often among faithful church attenders--that we most frequently display our lack of love for the Lord, and for others.

Let us take a look at another passage, Leviticus 24:10-23, which illustrates the extent to which the Lord takes the use of His name (and by extension, the use of our words) very seriously:

Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite. The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse, so they brought him to Moses. (His mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri the Danite.) They put him in custody until the will of the LORD should be made clear to them.

Then the LORD said to Moses: "Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: 'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible--anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.

" 'If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.' "

Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they took the blasphemer outside the camp and stoned him. The Israelites did as the LORD commanded Moses.

I understand that some of you are doubtless shocked at the extent to which the Lord was willing to go in order to cultivate an attitude of respect for His name, but I'd like to go back to the beginning of the passage for a moment:

Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite.

We live in a society that encourages its people to swear, to curse, to use profanity, and yes, to use the name of the Lord as an epithet whenever they are angry, frustrated, or (in the vernacular of our culture) "just need to blow off some steam." In the process, an entire generation has been taught to use their words as weapons, stabbing each other with the viciousness of their curses with the same energy that ancient men would have used in stabbing their enemies with swords, daggers, and axes.

I am very concerned at the extent to which we are training the future leaders of this nation to use their words to hurt others--and I am also concerned at the extent to which churchgoers are, whether they realize it or not, training their children to disrespect God. It seems that all we hear in churches these days is a mixture of political correctness, psychobabble, and (to me) mindless recitations of what one can only assume to have been the pastor's favorite reading while in seminary. In this environment, no one is taught to respect (and revere) the name of the Lord as it should be respected (and revered) because no one even understands the name of the Lord.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know that you may not believe that blaspheming the name of the Lord is a serious matter--after all, I felt that way myself for 15 years--but perhaps if you understood the nature of the Lord, you would think differently. After all, the Bible says that Christ Jesus is "the Word," that He "was with God," and that "He was God" (John 1:1). The Bible also says that through Christ Jesus, "all things were made" and that without Him, "nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3). The apostle Paul, speaking under the revelation of Christ through the Holy Spirit, wrote to the Colossians that Christ Jesus "is before all things" and that "in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). And of course, it is the name of Christ Jesus which is the only means of salvation for the human race.

It is the same Christ Jesus--the same "only begotten Son" of God (John 3:16), the same Christ who was with God in the beginning and who was God (John 1:1-2)--who was part of the Godhead speaking to Moses and to the ancient Israelites at Mount Sinai.



Let that sink in for a moment.



I understand that Christ Jesus was not "begotten" in a sense that we would recognize until the first century A.D., but if He is part of the Godhead, and if He was with God (and was God) at the dawn of creation, then the children of Israel heard His voice as surely as the first century apostles did. And if that is the case, do you think that He looks upon our callous use of His name as something less serious now than it was approximately three thousand years ago?

Ladies and gentlemen, if you feel shame as you are reading this post, it is because the Holy Spirit is convicting you about the importance of choosing your words carefully. Believers in Christ are called to speak the truth, to be kind and gracious to others, and to revere the holy name of the Lord in their speech as well as their actions. I know that some of you out there may have believed that it was okay to use profanity because it enabled you to "relate" to people who were not Christians, but the fact is, people who are not Christians need to see that those who claim the name of Christ also cherish the name of Christ in their hearts--and they need to see that when you adopt Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior, it means more than simply buying a Bible and going to church every Sunday.

If you revere the Lord, if you really revere the Lord in your heart, then wouldn't you naturally want your speech to reflect that? I know that when I was a nonbeliever, in every case when I knew I was in the presence of a believer in Christ, that person was someone whom I could not imagine swearing, tearing others down with their words, or spitting out the name of the Lord as a curse. There was a holy reverence for the Lord that was exhibited in their every word and action--as if it were part of their very being.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of reverence that convicts the lost and dying of their sins, and it is the kind of reverence that turns unrepentant liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers into holy men and women of Christ.

So many of us have fallen from a life of true purity in Christ--our words, our actions, our thoughts are so unrepresentative of the character, gentleness, and integrity of the Lord--and when I consider the extent to which my heart, soul, and (yes) mouth betray the committment my wife and I have made to Him, I cannot help but grieve for the abominable lack of heartfelt devotion inside of me. If there is anything, any sin in this world for which believers in Christ need to repent, it is our almost universal disobedience of the Lord's third commandment, and I fear that many of us, when we reach the throne of Christ, will find that we have spiritual blood on our hands.