The Third Commandment

Grace Reformation Bible Church

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Well, this morning we continue on with our third commandment, and as we do so,

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I'm very thankful that so many of us have been week by week working through this excellent book by Thomas Watson as he exposits the commandments.

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It frees me up to know I could not possibly say everything that's worth saying in the time we have this morning, and maybe even

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Watson in the length that he wrote couldn't cover everything that could be covered, but it's nice to know that we can be a little more rounded out even beyond what is spoken.

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That said, we do have a lot we want to consider this morning with the third commandment. Exodus 20, verse 7, you shall not take the name of the

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Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

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What does taking the name in vain mean? What does it mean to be taken in vain?

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Other translations are to use emptily or wrongly, to misuse, to be carried or borne out in a hollow way, borne as nothing.

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It shows you the idea of vain, vanity, essentially something without substance, something without being, unreality.

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So to take the name of God in vain means to treat it as some small thing, something empty, something hollow.

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It's to belittle it, and in that way to profane it. The name of God, according to the third commandment, is never to be taken lightly, never to be idly spoken, always with reverence, always with sincerity.

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We are to use the name of the true and living God. As we'll see in our first point, and as we recounted yesterday, there is a lot more that comes with that.

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There's more that is entailed in bearing or carrying the name of God rightly, and it goes beyond how we use our speech.

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Remember that God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, and Moses asked him, when

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I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, remember they were waiting for centuries for this deliverance that had been promised to Abraham to come, and so now

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Moses comes and he presents himself to them as the deliverer long awaited, and Moses asked the

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Lord, well when I go and I announce myself in this way and say the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and then they say to me, well what is his name?

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What shall I say to them? And it was there that God said, I am who

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I am. And when they ask you what is his name, you shall say to them,

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I am has sent me to you. So in Exodus 3, really the beginning of Exodus, we have this revelation of God according to his divine name.

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This is of course a major advance in the unfolding story of Scripture. It's in Exodus and not in Genesis that we encounter this initial revelation of the divine name to Moses, and if that's the beginning of the story, as we'll see in a moment, also toward the very end we also have this elaborate revelation of the name of God, just as we began at Horeb toward the beginning with this burning bush theophany, and here we are in chapter 20 with another manifestation of God's presence on the fiery mount, or as we began with Moses wandering 40 years in the desert, and then we'll end as we move through numbers with the same thing being carried out.

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So also the name being revealed toward the beginning will correspond to the name being proclaimed at the end.

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God reveals himself by his name. So we are to reverence

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God's name. That'll be the first point. We are to reverence God's name. Secondly, we are to represent

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God's name. And then thirdly, God's name will reign.

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God's name will reign. So let's talk about the reverence of God's name, the representation of God's name, and the reign of God's name.

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First, the reverence. Question 60 from our catechism, which we've been using each week as sort of a skeletal structure.

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What is required in the third commandment? The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, words, and works.

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So that positive use here initially is all about how we think of, how we speak of, how we represent the

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Lord God according to his name, his title, his attributes, his ordinances, his commands, his word, his works in the world.

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All of this is bound up in a proper way of keeping his name, not taking it in vain.

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When we talk about someone's name, what do we mean by that? We say, you know, they have a good name.

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If you think of a business, Blue Owl is the best name in plumbing. What do you mean by that?

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Is that the greatest name that's ever been conceived for a business? Maybe. Maybe. But what you mean by it is the reputation, right?

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They have a good reputation. Or, oh, I know his family, he comes from a good name. In other words, his reputation, his character is good.

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And we use name in this way. Think of how powerful a name is. If you, moms and dads, I know we have some expecting parents here in the congregation.

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You start to think about names that you might name your potential daughter or son. And inevitably, you come across a name that you like.

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And as soon as you say it, you know, Ricky. Your wife goes, oh, no. And you're like, what?

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She goes, oh, I knew someone named Ricky in third grade, don't want to revisit. A name can actually be stained.

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There's a reason after 1935, no German boys were named Adolf, right?

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That name just dropped away from the list. It had been a very common name prior to that.

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Names bear this kind of influence and power. You don't want to name your child with a name that has a bad association, even if it was 30 years in your past.

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Because you think somehow that stain, that character flaw, that reputation is going to be transmitted through the name to your child.

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So names have this kind of power. They contain not only identity, but character, reputation, attributes.

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And so if you have someone in your family that you love dearly, you almost want to name your children after them.

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You want something of that character. You want to show that kind of honor. This is the kind of power that names bear.

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God's name in this way stands for all that is true of him. His name is who he is.

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His name represents his character. Every title, every attribute, every aspect of his revelation, of his word, of his work through creation and through redemption, all of this is bound up in his name.

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In fact, when we get to the end of Exodus, as I mentioned, in Exodus 33, Moses will once again ask the

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Lord. Not this time, what shall I say to them when they ask, what's the name of our

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God? But he says, Lord, show me your glory. Here I am.

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Here I am, mediator of this wicked people. How in the world am

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I going to persevere, Lord? I need to see your glory. That's the only way

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I'll be able to persevere in leading this people. Show me your glory. Show me who

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I serve. Show me who I worship, Lord. Show me something of yourself. God says, you can't see me and live.

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God is a gracious God, and he loves to show mercy, and he wants to answer this desire of Moses' heart, and so he says,

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I'll take you to a cleft in the rock, I'll cover over you with my own hand, and I'll allow my glory to pass by.

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But what does he say? He says, I will make my goodness pass before you.

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I will proclaim the name of the Lord to you. And so notice that Moses is wanting to behold the

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Lord, coming out of the second commandment last week. He wants to see the glory. And God says,

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I have got something just as good. I'm going to proclaim my name to you. For me to proclaim my name, for me to open up or unravel what my name contains, the

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Lord, the Lord, full of mercy, full of compassion.

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For me to show you my name and proclaim it before you is as if you are seeing my glory.

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For my name contains my glory. And so this is the way that God manifests his glory.

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He does it by his name. For this reason, we are never to take that name in vain. It's no small thing.

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He will not hold us guiltless if we do so. So we must revere God's name. We must ascribe reverence to it.

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That's Psalm 29. Throughout the Psalms, you have this constant refrain, give unto the Lord or ascribe unto the

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Lord. Oh, you mighty ones, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due his name.

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His name is owed glory because of what his name signifies, because of what it contains, because of what it means.

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So we are to give glory to the name of God. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. In the song of Moses.

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Deuteronomy 32, he says, give ear, oh heavens, I will speak. Hear, oh earth, the words of my mouth.

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Let my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distil as the dew, as the raindrops on the tender herb, as showers on the grass, for I proclaim the name of the

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Lord. This isn't just something he does for 20 minutes on a morning.

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He's saying every aspect of the created fabric needs to hear this proclamation of the name of the

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Lord from the raindrops on the sprouts, from the showers that drop, the dew that distils.

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These things must saturate with the name that I proclaim. Give greatness to our God. So creation is surrounding us, calling us, drawing us to give this kind of greatness to his name.

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It's rather sad. You can watch these incredibly well -made nature documentaries, you know,

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Sir Richard Attenborough doing a fantastic job narrating. And you can sense the absolute awe and fascination with the created world and the diversity, the beauty of the creatures that God has made and all their idiosyncratic behaviors and the way this whole thing meshes together.

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And it's almost like they can't contain the awe, the fascination, and people in droves by the millions watch these things, and yet they can never translate that in reverence to God in a way that praises the

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Creator. So they end up worshipping the creature, worshipping themselves. Psalm 8, in many ways, shows us where we should begin and end, but in the middle is where we tend to go astray.

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Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth. Oh, what's so excellent about his name in the earth?

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According to Psalm 8. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.

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You have set your glory above the heavens. Here we are now. We're above the highest heights, as it were, above the dwelling place of the unseen realm.

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You have set your glory above the heavens, and now where do we go? All the way down to the smallest among us, out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you ordain strength.

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Because of your enemies that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the psalmist says, the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars which you've ordained, what is man that you're mindful of him, the son of man that you visit him?

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You've made him a little lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor. You've made him to have dominion over the works of your hands.

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You've put all things under his feet, all sheep, all oxen, all the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea.

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Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent, you'd almost think he's about to say, is our name.

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Because the whole of Psalm 8 is talking about man being crowned with glory, man being given dominion.

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What is man that we have this kind of prestige, this kind of power, this kind of capacity, this kind of authority?

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But the psalmist doesn't end with, how amazing is our name? No, back to the refrain.

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How excellent is your name? How excellent is your name?

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When we reverence God's name, it has a certain impact in our lives. By reverencing

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God's name, we are brought to contemplate and reflect upon God. Of course that transforms our speech, it transforms a lot of things about our personality, about our communication, about our behavior, about the ways that we react to things.

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Out of the mouth, the Lord Jesus taught, proceeds everything from the heart.

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That mouth gate betrays everything that's within a man.

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I remember my great -grandmother lived up in Nova Scotia. For some reason, she was absolutely devoted to the

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Queen Mother. She had portraits of the Queen all over, and it did impact her.

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She lived in this tiny little farmer's cottage. My great -uncle took it over, his toes would, you know, come right out of his boots.

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He had a phone. He was hard of hearing, so he hung a phone in the middle of the living room, would go over there and pick pea pods in the summers, and I thought he was, you know, the poorest peasant

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I'd ever known. He was actually a millionaire, but he just, he lived very simply. He went through the Great Depression.

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Money comes easy, it goes easy. He never held onto it. But still, in that home was surrounded all these images, all these tributes to the

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Queen. And I remember, even in that little farmer's village, in that very simple way of country life, how refined their speech was.

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You would have thought you were in 19th century, you know, upper crust, talking with a Victorian lady.

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That was how my, even my grandmother rubbed off on her. You know, there was always tea time.

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And just the etiquette, just the speech, there was a certain decorum, and that came because of her adoration, her reverence for the

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Queen. She wanted to emulate that. Though she had very humble surroundings, she did what she could in that setting to sort of elevate herself, her standard, her behavior.

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That's what it's like to show reverence to a name. It doesn't really matter what my circumstances are,

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I have a higher standard. I'm raising the bar. And so she was reflecting on this, and then therefore reflecting it.

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This is what it's like to reverence the name of God. Psalm 48, we've thought, O God, on your lovingkindness.

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According to your name, O God, so is your praise. So is your right hand, full of righteousness. The psalmist understands, the more we understand about your name, who you are, what you have done, so will we praise you.

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And that's why we think about your lovingkindness. We think about your covenant faithfulness. The more we think about who you are, what you have done, all that the name signifies, then the more our worship conforms to that.

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This is true even in penitence, even in lament, even in great cries and groans of repentance.

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We find God's people have always looked at God's name as what they needed, God's name as what they're falling short of.

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I'll give you an example, many examples, but I'll give you an example from Isaiah 63. It's a sort of prayer of penitence.

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In 64 comes the great solution, the great answer to this dilemma.

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But here we have sort of the prayer of a worshiper, which really, taken at large, should be the heart of God's people, as they're here in exile, wondering how in the world will

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God fulfill His promise. Look down from heaven. Keep that in mind for where it goes in 64.

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Chapter headings are very late, and so never, you know, it's a bad habit to assume just because you have things blocked off in chapters, that means that that's a self -contained unit.

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And I think Isaiah 63 toward the end, heading into 64, is a perfect example of why chapter headings can sometimes betray the tapestry of the narrative or the text.

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Well, here in Isaiah 63, notice where we begin. Look down from heaven and see from your habitation holy and glorious.

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So God is in heaven. This penitential prayer is going up. Look down upon me, Lord. You are in heaven.

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It doesn't seem like you're looking because it doesn't seem like you're answering. It seems like your people have no hope.

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Look down from heaven. See from your habitation holy and glorious. Where's your zeal and your strength?

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Where is the yearning of your heart, your mercies toward me? Right? He's lamenting. I haven't found your restoration, but where is that long -suffering mercy that you love to show?

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Is it restrained? Doubtless, you are our father. Though Abraham was ignorant of us,

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Israel did not acknowledge us. Right? He says, even if we didn't have Abraham and all of the promises of the patriarchs, even if we were not numbered among Israel, even so, you would be our father.

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You, O Lord, are our father. Our redeemer from everlasting is your name, O Lord.

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So now what is this prayer doing? It's saying, Lord, I know your name. I know who you are.

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Your name is everlasting redeemer. So why aren't you redeeming? Notice how the name becomes a handhold of boldness for this prayer of penitence.

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Your people, he says, your holy people have possessed this land but a little while.

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Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary. We've become like those of old over whom you never ruled, those who are never called by your name.

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Do you see what he's saying? You put your name on us. And I know your name.

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Your name is everlasting redeemer to us. But right now, it's as if we didn't have your name.

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We didn't know your name. Right now, it's as if you hadn't ruled us. You hadn't called us. You hadn't promised these things to us.

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Now again, where do we go? 64. Oh, that you would rend the heavens. So 63, look down from heaven.

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He gets through this prayer, this cry, and then he says, oh, that you would split open the heavens and come down, that the mountains might shake at your presence, as fire burns brush, as fire causes water to boil, to make your name known.

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So notice how all of this is revolving, as it were, around the name of God.

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We know your name, but it seems as if we have not been named by that name. And we know that your desire is to magnify your name, to make your name known.

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And so Lord, rend the heavens and come down. This is the desire of Isaiah's heart.

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This is the desire of all of God's people, that we would reverence God's name in this way.

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And so we ask the question, do you reverence God's name? Do you give God's name the reverence that it is due?

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Now a related question to that is our second point. As I think of my great -grandmother, to reverence

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God's name is to represent God's name. Question 61, what is forbidden in the third commandment?

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The third commandment forbids all profaning and abusing of anything whereby God makes himself known.

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Judgment falls upon Israel because God's name is profaned. Romans 2 .24,

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right? My name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. So God's name is profaned and therefore judgment falls upon the people of God.

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We have it throughout the prophets, Malachi 1 is perhaps a more famous example. A son honors his father.

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A servant honors his master. If I'm a father, where's my honor? If I'm a master, where's my reverence, says the

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Lord of hosts, to you priests who despise my name. The priests are those who are actually to guard and represent the name.

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In Malachi's rebuke, they are defiling the name, despising, hating the name of God.

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I have no pleasure in you, God says. I will not accept an offering from your hands.

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From the rising of the sun to its going down, my name shall be great among the nations. In every place, incense is offered to my name, a pure offering.

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My name will be great among them, says the Lord of hosts. So they're not revering

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God's name. The priests are not representing God's name rightly. And God says, therefore,

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I accept nothing that you bring. You despise my name and so I despise your offering.

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My name will be known among the Gentiles. This was the vocation of Israel. So the

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Lord essentially is charging his people with defamation. Defamation. Somewhat recently, not to head toward the gutters as it were, but somewhat recently, a very famous defamation case was all over the print magazines,

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Nightly News. It was the defamation case between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.

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I don't know how much more you could defame these people, but they went to court because of a newspaper article that the jury found in Depp's favor had basically stained his reputation and therefore prevented him from work that he would have been able to acquire.

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And so they awarded him $10 million in damages. And that's the key word in a defamation case, damages.

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You've been defamed. Your reputation has been soiled. Your name has been marked.

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It's been put in infamy. Damage has been done.

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Recompense therefore is owed. You see the picture there. The key word is damage. The name is damage.

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It's defiled. It's profaned. Justice requires recompense. Something must be restored to the name.

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What's being said of that name is not true. And so that's what we have in the situation of Israel.

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This is what God is rebuking His people for. You have done damage to my name. Judgment must come because my name must be restored.

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If you will not represent my name rightly, then my judgment upon you will represent my name rightly.

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Taking God's name in vain is to treat Him like one of the endless wooden or stone statues of the pagans, a lowercase g

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God that can be manipulated according to the desires of the worshiper. There's nothing required of a holy reverence from the heart.

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Give me your heart, my son, says the Lord. The pagan worshiper never has to concern himself with that.

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He never has to trouble his conscience. Mere external conformity is all that his stone and wooden gods require.

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It's just sheer manipulation. Demand and supply. You do these things, irrespective of your interior desire, you do these things to manipulate, demand and supply, and these gods will meet your needs.

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You'll gain some control. You'll somehow, you know, find favor in the eyes of your false gods, but God is not that way.

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And so to take God's name in vain, to treat Him as among the panoply of other things that we seek to put at our disposal, as a means toward our ends, is to belittle the name of the infinite

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God. It's to damage His name. And He will be avenged. 2

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Corinthians 11 .4, if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, you put up with it readily enough.

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Paul was ministering already in the first century, in the middle of the first century, he was ministering and there were already false

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Jesuses being preached. Nothing new under the sun. It didn't take very long for counterfeit gospels to be proclaimed among the early churches, and here we are even still.

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This is another aspect of taking God's name in vain. It's not representing Him rightly.

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And if we represent Him falsely, we're no longer representing Him. We've made another

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God, another Jesus, another gospel, because it's not being represented according to His Word, according to truth.

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So there are many in our day that are drawn away, they want to speak of, they want to testify about, they want to come and worship a

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God that they've invented, a Jesus of their own devising, another Jesus, in the language of Paul.

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Custom made according to their own desires, their own wish fulfillment. I want

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God to nod and wink at this. I also want Him to judge this. I want to be able to say that God hates all these things that I hate, but He doesn't mind all the things that I love.

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Another Jesus, another God, taking His name in vain. We are in an election year.

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Brace yourselves. For God's name to be taken in vain in this way, left and right, from all the candidates that trump around on stage.

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That's sort of a Freudian slip. Just speaking a name, referencing

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God, showing up in a church, and all the other ones go, oh, this is so wonderful, a photo op with the Bible.

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And if we're thinking rightly, that's taking God's name in vain. You're not representing

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God all right, neither are you seeking to worship Him in sincerity and truth. He's a means to your end.

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You've made God, as it were, a political mule for your own advancement. And He will not hold you guiltless, nor will

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He hold a nation guiltless. We cannot be duped when we see third commandment breakers transgressing this, profaning, damaging the reputation of God.

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Right wing, you know, red politicians. They know, they have to mention at least one

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Bible verse in every speech. They have to have, you know, some reference to God, some outward show of piety, and usually we settle for that.

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How pathetic. Do you fear God? Do you fear

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God? There's very few politicians, you can probably count on one hand, how many genuinely

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God -fearing leaders we have in this nation. This is all taking

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His name in vain because it does not represent Him all right. I see awful things online, because I frequent this website called

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Protestia, and they post horrific things. One that unfortunately is now bouncing around, pinballing around in my mind is something

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I saw yesterday. It was a video of an Episcopal, I'm assuming, priestess dressed in drag as a clown, and in front of the table from her little lectern was a sort of cattery of rainbow teddy bears and this huge pillar candle that was called the

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Candle of Commitment to Change, and they opened with this liturgical litany, and this was what was said,

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God our Mother, this world is Your womb, and here we are growing, forming, expanding in Your holy mystery.

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You are creating alongside us. You are creating with us. Loving Creator, embolden us to be the midwives of ourselves.

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What gobbledygook. In this life we encounter people who tell us who we should be, but we don't like that.

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I'm so glad, God, You're not like that. You don't tell me what I should be like. May we remember the person we are deep in our soul, who we want to be, and who we love being according to our own sinful dictate.

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Loving Creator, fill us with holy imagination as we create the person we are becoming.

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I wish it was still a thing that you could tear your robes like they did in the first century, just, ah,

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I can't believe I heard this. You know, now something must be Hulk Hogan's because it's so awful and blasphemous.

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When we don't reverence the name of God, that slippery slope takes us all the way down to this kind of profanity.

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There was a day, and we're not too far from it here in this region, when the Puritans branded. In very few cases did they actually physically mutilate the flesh.

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It was more often a symbol or an article of clothing, but it was a branding nonetheless. And, of course, this was made famous by the rather poor treatment of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.

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It does no justice to the Puritans in New England. But I was reading through the records of the New England Historical Society just looking for some of the details on this practice.

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I'll give you a few examples. In 1633, Robert Coles had to stand with a white sheet of paper on his back with the word drunkard written in great letters on it as long as the court ordered for abusing himself with drink.

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The next year, Coles received a more severe sentence. He had to wear the letter D, cut from red cloth, on a white background for an entire year.

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So everywhere he went, he was marked, he was branded. You were proclaiming

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God's name, you were speaking of God's name, but you were living this life of outward sin in a very public way, and so what you kept in secret, we will not proclaim.

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You've been proclaiming God's name outwardly, but denying it in secret. In secret, you've been worshiping and reverencing something else in your life, so we're going to put out in public that which you're really doing in secret.

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That was the logic. Another example, Massachusetts magistrates reproved anyone who interrupted a preacher during worship.

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If they did it twice, they had to pay a fine of five pounds and stand on a block four foot high with a sign in capital letters.

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Those were the good old days. Wouldn't it be great just to be like, hey, strike one? Yeah, I know where those five pounds could go.

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You know, you're on thin ice. But more to the point, 1656, a woman received a sentence at Taunton in Plymouth.

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She was fined and forever to have a Roman letter B, cut from red cloth, sewed onto her overgarment in the sight of all.

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What do you think that B stood for? Blasphemy. Blasphemy.

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She had not represented God aright. She was a blasphemer. And so she had to be marked.

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If she would not wear the name or bear the name rightly, then she must be marked according to her practice.

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Now, if you think that is really harsh, I can tell you that the Levitical command is a lot more harsh.

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It wasn't a letter B put on your jacket. It was something far more extreme.

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My point is only to say, in our own region's past, this is how far even the civil magistrate went to revere the name of God.

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Those days are far gone. Now it's the very same magistracy that defiles the name of God, that openly mocks the name of God.

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Is it any wonder, then, that we live in such hardened depravity? It's the evidence of God's judgment upon us.

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And how, as the church, are we to begin to address this, to turn the tide, to be salt and light, to advance the kingdom in this kind of setting?

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Well, it must begin here. We must be those who represent God aright. Remember, though, the third commandment was given to a kingdom of priests.

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Israel was to be this kingdom of priests. They were to bear the name of God to the nations. It was the task of this priestly people to represent the

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Lord God. Who is this God that you serve? What is His name? What is

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He like? What has He done? They were to represent Him to the nations. And so the priestly people represent to the nations in the same way that the priesthood represents to the people.

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The high priest would represent the Lord God to the people, and by the same token, represent the people to the

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Lord God. He was this mediation between God and the people. He would take the sins and the needs of the people to the

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Lord God, and He would take the answer and the absolution and the blessing of God to the people.

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So the name, of course, was crucial. Crucial to Israel's task. Crucial to Israel's identity.

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The name was crucial in Israel's worship. It was never to be borne lightly. When God wants to call upon His people and affirm them in His promise and bless them according to His covenant, what does

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He do? He tells the high priest, give them this benediction, the Aaronic blessing, number six.

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And what does that whole Aaronic blessing revolve around? The name. The name.

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The Lord. The Lord. The Lord. It constitutes the people under the blessing of God, in the covenant of God, by the promise of God, by His name.

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In Exodus 28, we'll be there many months from now, in Exodus 28,

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God is giving, again, artistic instructions for how the priesthood is to be adorned.

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And as far as the high priest is concerned, he used to have a tzitz. You can say, if you want a little

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Hebrew punchline joke, the high priest had tzitz on his forehead. What we mean by that is the nameplate.

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You shall make a plate of pure gold, engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the

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Lord. So think of Aaron, think of the high priest. He has this pure gold front piece on his turban, held by these beautiful blue ribbons.

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And inscribed upon this was holiness to the Lord. Holiness to the

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Lord. It's the first time we come across this phrase. You shall put it on a blue cord, that it may be on the turban, it shall be on the front, it shall be on Aaron's forehead.

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That Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel hallow in all of their holy gifts, and it shall always be on his forehead, so that they may be accepted before the

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Lord. So this name, holiness to the Lord, this name on the forehead, would mark the reason that Aaron could stand, the reason that the sacrifice would be accepted, because of this name.

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We're marked, in other words. We're marked by this name. Revelation 13, we have a mark.

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It's funny that this gets all the attention. I don't think that was John's intention at all. Revelation 13, we have what?

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The mark of the beast. The mark of the beast. He causes all, there's a beast that rises from the sea, and then the beast on the land causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads.

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No one can buy or sell except the one who has this mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

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Where's John drawing this from? Well, first, just in terms of immediate context, slaves probably bore the name of their master.

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We know for sure fugitive slaves did. They would be perhaps branded on their forehead with an acronym for fugitive, or an abbreviation for it.

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We have evidence of slave callers. I belong to my master so and so.

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Sometimes it could be a mark put on the body, either a tattoo or an act that would create a scar that would be recognizable.

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In Apuleius's Metamorphoses, he makes reference to the frontis literati, the sort of mark on the head of the slaves.

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So it could be that quite literally they had the name of their master on their forehead. That could be some background, but more importantly is

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Ezekiel 9, which I'm not going to spend too much time on, where the Lord commands that in the holy city all those that groan and cry out for the sins have a mark put on their forehead, and they alone are spared.

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Everyone else is destroyed. That's background for John, but then also this high priestly front piece, holiness to the

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Lord, the mark, the name on the head. So in Revelation 14, what

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John really wants our attention to be on is not the satanic parody of being marked, of being named, of being a representative.

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The beast is parodying what God is doing. He marks all of his people as well.

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He provides for them and controls them in this way. He is identified in them in this way.

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His name is put upon them, a mark of the beast. But God, of course, puts his mark on his people.

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Revelation 14, I looked and behold a lamb standing on Mount Zion and with him 144 ,000 having his father's name written on their foreheads.

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So they, the Lord's people, in totality, the Lord's people have his name on their forehead just like the priests.

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Revelation 15, same thing. I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire and those who have victory over the beast, over his image, over his mark, over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God, they sing the song of Moses.

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We recounted that from Deuteronomy 32, all about God's name. The servant of God, the song of the lamb, saying, great, marvelous are your works,

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Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints. Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name?

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It's a name on their forehead. It's a name they've been marked by. It's a name they're representing. Everyone has a mark.

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What John is saying is, do you have the mark of the beast or do you have the mark of the father? Do you have the mark unto damnation or do you have the mark unto salvation?

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How are you representing the Lord God? And that leads, thirdly, to this reign of God's name.

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God's judgment falls upon all those who do not bear his name. The high priest can only be accepted before God because he has holiness to the

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Lord. He has the name of God on his forehead. Otherwise, he and all of the people behind him are utterly repelled and rejected from the presence of God.

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But he comes in and that's why he must always wear this. That's the reason he's accepted. The name of the

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Lord God. One way of getting at this, thinking of Aaron and thinking of representing rightly, one of the points that our brother

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Joshua made yesterday morning, a point from Thomas Watson, is when we murmur against God's providence, we take his name in vain.

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It made me think of perhaps the greatest example of murmuring which involves Aaron and his sister

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Miriam. Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron are speaking out against Moses.

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And the reason given is because of this marriage he has to an Ethiopian woman. I think that factors into the way that Miriam is judged by God.

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But here you have Aaron, the high priest of the people. Here you have Miriam. And they're both murmuring and grumbling against Moses.

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And the disregard they have for him apparently relates to the wife that he chose.

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And so they said this, has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? In other words, why is Moses, the one that's always in front, why is he the chosen leader?

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Why is he the mediator? Have we not also given counsel? Can we not also lead? Has he not spoken through us also?

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And the Lord heard it. Then we have this little parenthetical statement that we all love. Now Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth.

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There's a little backdrop. He didn't deserve this kind of reproach. Suddenly the

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Lord said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, come out, the three of you, to the tabernacle of the meeting. This is just perhaps an ordinary

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Wednesday morning going about the needs of the camp, going about the problems with the people. And here is, you know,

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Moses is kind of off to the side. So Aaron and Miriam are like, can you get a load of this guy? Moses, such a great leader.

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Look at his choice in wives. Not very good. Has the Lord not also led through us? And they just start feeding each other into this little cycle of murmuring and grumbling and bearing reproach upon Moses.

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Perhaps they've done this for quite some time. It finally gets to the point where the Lord is going to intervene. And so he says, the three of you come to the tenth of meeting.

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Now really only Miriam and Aaron need to be addressed, but the Lord knows Moses has a role to play. I remember,

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I was generally a pretty decent kid in school, but I do remember one time where I got called to the principal's office.

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You know, that intercom buzz, and it's like Ross McDonald to the principal's office, and all your friends are like, ooh, and you have to do the walk of shame, you're like, oh.

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That's kind of what I imagine this is like, but, you know, an infinitely holy principal, as it were, come to the tenth of meeting.

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We've got to sit down and talk. So the three came out, and the Lord came down in the pillar of clouds, stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called

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Aaron and Miriam, right? He called Moses to come, but he's only going to address Aaron and Miriam. They both went forward, and he said, hear now my words.

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If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream.

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Not so with my servant Moses. Moses doesn't go,

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God, I had the strangest dream. I think we should go south, right? No. With Moses I speak face to face.

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We're just as good as Moses, aren't we? Do you have that kind of access to me, God is saying?

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Do I call you into my presence in that way? Have you known me face to face?

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He's faithful in all of my house. I speak with him face to face, plainly, not in dark sayings.

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He even sees the form of the Lord. Again, not that the

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Lord can be seen in that way. He is spirit and invisible, but that doesn't mean he does not have a form.

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And so the afterglow of his glory, right? Or the vision of Ezekiel 1. It's ways of saying there is something about the form of the

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Lord. So then why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Now I want you to remember at this point,

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Exodus 28, as Aaron is grumbling and complaining and casting reproach upon Moses, as he's feeding sort of gossip and vindicating his feelings of dejection with his sister, as he's allowing hatred and jealousy and contempt to bubble up within his heart, at all times he has this golden plate on his forehead that says,

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Holiness to the Lord. But he's not representing the

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Lord in all of this speech, in all of this behavior, in all of this derision and jealousy. And so even when he's going to the tent of meeting, and the

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Lord is about to address Miriam and Aaron, the whole time that the rebuke is lashed out, we have the sort of flashing gold being reflected on the eyes of Miriam.

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The whole time the name is there, but the name is not being reverenced.

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It didn't mean anything for Aaron to have the name on his forehead. It didn't prevent him from speaking against his brother.

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It didn't sanctify him or restrain him from his sin. Though he had the name on the forehead, it didn't mean he had the name on his heart.

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Now we are a holy nation, we are a kingdom of priests, we have the name of the

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Lord on our foreheads. Do we reverence that name? Do we represent that name rightly?

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Does that name, does that representation constrain the sinfulness that we have, that so easily entangles us, the way that we look, speak, act, or think of others?

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Is there some restraint because I have the name of God, Holiness to the Lord, written on my head?

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Or is your life a double standard? It doesn't match your name plate, as it were. God rebukes

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Miriam. The anger of the Lord was aroused. The cloud departed from the tabernacle. Miriam became leprous.

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She was taking racist shots at this dark -skinned Ethiopian. Now her skin is as white as snow, and not in a pretty way.

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Her flesh is decaying. Miriam became leprous, as white as snow. Aaron isn't made a leper.

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So Miriam is judged, she's made to be a leper. Now she's unclean, has to be outside of the camp.

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Aaron turned toward Miriam. There she was, a leper. You love the narrative, puts you right there, as it were, in the sandals.

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He wants you to notice the clouds depart, and as soon as he looks, she's a leper now.

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Her flesh is decaying. And so Aaron shouts out to Moses, My Lord, don't lay this sin on us.

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We've done foolishly, we've sinned. And Moses cries out to the

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Lord, saying, Heal her, please, God, I pray. Now we know why Moses was called to that tent as well.

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But judgment doesn't fall on Aaron, so it seems. Miriam is made to be a leper.

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So where is God's rebuke of Aaron? Well, it's not in the leprosy, it's in his inability.

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It's in his sheer impotence. He is the high priest of the true and living

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God over all of the children of Israel. The high priest who alone could have access into the holy of holies, where God made

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Himself to dwell on that day of atonement. Think of the unmitigated access and privilege that belonged to this man,

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Aaron, representing as the high priest the mediation of God to the people. But in this moment, he's as helpless as a three -year -old.

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There's nothing he can say, nothing he can pray, nothing he can do to intervene and help his sister.

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Though he has holiness to the Lord on this golden, glowing nameplate, he's utterly useless.

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There's nothing he can do except cry out to the mediator and say, please heal, please deliver.

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Now, perhaps Aaron finally saw that he had taken the name of the Lord in vain. He recognized in that humbling moment, knowing his sheer inability,

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Moses is the righteous one, Moses is the faithful one. Moses must be the mediator. Moses must intercede.

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Though he had holiness to the Lord on his forehead, he knew that what he needed most was the man who was genuinely holy to the

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Lord. And in this, we see the Gospel. We're not holy to the

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Lord because we are marked on our forehead. We're not holy to the Lord because we can earn some status.

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We're not holy to the Lord or somehow effectual because of our performance, because of our privileges, because of our graces and our gifts.

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No, no, no, there's only one who's truly holy to the Lord. And he is our great high priest, and he is our mediator, and we cry out to him for healing and for help.

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And like Moses in Numbers, Jesus from the cross cries out, intervenes.

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Though he was the one that received the hatred, the scorn, the rejection, Moses doesn't hesitate.

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He doesn't take a split second to jump in and say, please, heal.

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Here you have the heart of our Savior in the life of Moses, don't you? Moses doesn't go, it's good to see you get what you deserve.

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How dare you mock me? How dare you speak against me? Yeah, that's right. Didn't you hear what he said about all the glories that I have?

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How unique I am to God? How dare you speak against me? I'm glad to see that you're suffering now.

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No, not at all. He takes all that hatred, all that scorn. He's being sinned against.

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And he looks in the eyes of his enemies, as it were, in that very moment, and he sees them being judged for their sinfulness.

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And he says, no, Lord, take it away. Heal them, deliver them. Now that's

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Moses as a human mediator of God's people. The Lord Jesus, of course, knows if there's any mediation, it can't just be a cry, please don't do this.

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He has to enter in, take that place. He has to become the leper. He has to take the death penalty.

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As Peter Lightheart said so well, Jesus bears the full weight of the

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Father's name. Some of the men were recoiling yesterday morning. Is it really true that the third commandment has these ramifications?

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Isn't it just about our speech or our vows? I mean, is it really that broad?

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If it's that broad, everything is the third commandment. Well, you're not far off to think of it in that way.

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It's so utterly comprehensive. Any false thought, any false use, any time you're belittling, any time you're just slightly by a micron inaccurate about your representation of God.

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You've broken this commandment. You've taken His name in vain. You're not truly, faithfully representing

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Him. You're not reverencing Him or giving Him the glory that causes seraphs to hide their sight, to hide their faces.

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They dare not look at Him as they scream, Holy, Holy, Holy. And Jesus had to bear the weight of all.

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Though at every millisecond of His earthly life, He perfectly reverenced the name of His Father.

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He not once, not once was failing in the way He represented it. Not once was

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He inaccurate. Not once did He do it injustice. Not once did He belittle it or make it something less than it was.

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Not once did the fear of man cause Him to lower His fear of God. He bore the name perfectly.

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And then they put nails through His hands and they stuck a spear in His side because we've never kept it perfectly.

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We defile and blaspheme the name of God among the nations. And He bears the full weight of that transgression on the tree.

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And He bears the weight of the name, of the character, of the majesty, of the glory of God until it crushes

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Him and basically takes His name away from the living. He suffered for every moment of your indifference.

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Every time that circle of coworkers made you into a hypocrite, He suffered for that.

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Every time you slighted, however unintentionally, the glory and beauty of God, it caused

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Him to cry out in agony from Golgotha. And that alone is why when

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He took Him who bore the name and it crushed Him from the grave where He had no name, what did

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He receive as a result of that? A name which is above every name. A name that every knee shall bow to.

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A name that every tongue shall confess. Jesus Christ is Lord. That's why, brothers and sisters, in this new covenant, in this covenant of Christ's blood, we are baptized into His death, brought forth from these waters, from this grave, as it were, by the

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Spirit into this resurrected life. That's why we're baptized into the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Spirit. Because we're priests, but we're just like Aaron.

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We're priests that don't always represent what's written on our forehead very well. And so, as we come to a close, we have to remember that this name that now is above every name, that is advancing through all the earth, decade by decade, century by century, there's more tribes and tongues that proclaim this name.

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Praise God. Follow the work of Wycliffe Institute or SLI or some of these translation societies where infants in the past two centuries of just getting the

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Scriptures and the tongues that have yet to receive the Scriptures. So there's more nations, more tribes, more tongues that are worshiping the

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Lamb, that are speaking this blessed name. More priests in this heavenly kingdom that have that holiness to the

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Lord written on their forehead, who know in and of themselves they have no holiness, but they cry out to the Holy One.

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They cry out to their Mediator, their great High Priest, and they're dressed in His righteousness. And He's keeping us.

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And He's purifying us. However rusted, however spotted, however soiled that nameplate can be.

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He's purifying it. He's cleansing it. He's making it true. And the day is fixed when this work that He's begun in you will have its consummation.

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And that radiant golden nameplate will correspond to the deepest recesses of your being.

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You will genuinely be holy to the Lord. That's what

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John says in Revelation 22. On that day there will be no more curse.

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The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it. His servants will serve Him. They shall see His face.

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Remember last week? See His face. His name will be on their foreheads.

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His name will be on their foreheads. There'll be no night. They'll have no need for a lamp.

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No need for the sun. The Lord God will give them light and they will reign forever and ever.

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The name of the Lord God will on that day never again be taken in vain. Never again.

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Never slighted. Never misused. Never hidden. Never misunderstood.

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On that day, God's name will be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven.

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Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank

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You for Your Word. We thank You, Lord, for Your name. Your holy name. A name above every name.

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And all that that name means for us. Lord, who are we that You would mark our foreheads with Your name?

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That You would claim us, Lord, to belong to You. That You would have us as Your representatives here on earth.

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As Your body on the earth. Oh, Lord, forgive us,

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Lord. Lord, we have not thought rightly of this third commandment. We've curtailed some of the ways that other people speak and we think, therefore, we've kept it.

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Oh, Lord. Give us a right understanding of what this means. Lord, if we've been marked out and separated, as it were, in Babylon, may

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You show us how more faithful we can be, Lord. The work that You've given us to do. That we would never bear

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Your name in some hollow or belittling way, but Lord, we would bear Your name rightly. That we would give to Your name the glory that it is due.

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In the way that we think. In the way that we speak. In the way that we appear. In the way that we interact.

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In the work that we do. In the way that we work. Lord, whatever it is, may we remember that we always have this name on our forehead.

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And yet we yearn and await that day when what it promises is fully realized.

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Thank You for our Savior. Thank You that it's His grace that we'll do this great work.

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Thank You, Lord, that we have a mediator who cries out on our behalf. Give us a greater love for Him.

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Give us, Lord, affection that melts these stony hearts, these ears that are so hard of hearing, eyes that are so dull to see.

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Let us love our Savior. Knowing that in keeping this commandment, like keeping all of His commandments, we know that we love