LAW HOMILY: His Name Dishonored

Every week, we look into the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to His people. We want to understand how we can obey. We want to understand what the commandments of God are as Spirit-filled believers, so that we can begin to learn to live according to His covenant precepts.

The Third Commandment Against Taking God's Name in Vain

So today, we are on the second commandment. Nope, we're not, we're on the third commandment. Sorry about that. I didn't update my notes, but here it is. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain.

Now, what's interesting is the third commandment doesn't end with a prohibition. It ends with a verdict or a sentence. God doesn't merely say, do not take my name in vain. He says, I will not leave the man unpunished.

And in that way, we may excuse this. Churches may overlook it. You may hide beneath a kind of religious language or public respectability, but God will not let this sin slide. He pairs it with a sentence attached to it.

I will not let the guilty go unpunished in this way. And the reason for that is because God's name is unimaginably holy. And in the scriptures, God's name is a representation of His being. So when we take His name in vain, we're taking Him in vain.

When we treat His name as common, we are treating Him as common. We are actually making a Trinitarian heresy when we proclaim God's name in vain. We are treating the infinitely holy one as though He were common.

And think about a creature made of dust, looking at the holy one of God and saying such things. This is why it's such a grievous sin. It seems like no big deal. We say it all the time, oh my, and then.

Or we say things like dear God, but we don't even mean it. We do this all the time so flippantly, and yet that's the danger in this command is that it seems so commonplace. It seems so easy to do, and yet it's so tremendously executable by God, punishable by God.

And if not for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, there would be millions of violations on this sin that would be a noose around our neck in eternal hell. Praise be to Jesus Christ for forgiving us, but also now that we have the Spirit, let us come to Him and confess where we fall short, where we've taken His name in vain, where we've treated Him in vain, where we've treated God commonly, where we've entered into our morning prayer with boredom, where we've come to sleep in on Sundays, not coming to worship because we have, to catch up on our beauty rest, some more than others, I probably need more beauty rest because I'm already starting from a low position.

But you know what I mean? We always do things that treat God as common. Like we were praying this morning that we would worship God in a way that is befitting of His glory, because we never do that. We have never once in our life worshiped God in a way that's actually befitting of His glory.

Is that not a taking of God in vain? All of us are guilty. Let us pray and let us confess our sins to the Father. Lord God, of all the commands, this one seems the most ubiquitous in our hearts and in our lives of things that we have violated, from not cherishing you fully to speaking your name as though it were not holy, of being flippant and unintentional in everything that we do.

Lord, I pray that you would forgive us of the high treason of calling you, treating you as though you were common. Lord, I pray that even the thought in our heart right now that understands that this is a big deal, but doesn't feel it, doesn't really believe it, doesn't even imagine what it looks like to live differently.

Lord, I pray that you would work in those areas of our life. As David prayed, would you reveal the sin inside of us? Lord, help us to be a people who cherish your name and to the best of both our ability, but also with the Spirit's power at work in us.

Lord, would you grow us to be people who speak of your name as holy, that act as if we really believe that you are holy and to do everything that we do in word and in deed, whether we eat or whether we drink, let us do it all to the glory of God in ways that are befitting of your majesty.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to this homily on the law of God from our Covenant Renewal worship this past Lord's Day. We publish these messages each week because we believe that God loves his law and far from throwing it away, we believe that the death and resurrection of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will actually help us learn to love and obey God's law.

And that's our prayer for you, that as you chew on these expositions each week, that you would both learn to love and come into alignment with the law of God. And we pray that you would do that by the Spirit's power through the finished work of Christ and to the glory of God.

And with that, God bless you.