Vows of Vanity (3rd Commandment) — Law Homily

Now this week, as we would come before the law of God, we are in the third commandment once again.

And that third commandment says this in Exodus chapter 20 at verse seven. Thou shalt not take the name of the

Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

We often think first about speech here, profanity, careless, you know,

OMGs, using the Lord's name as punctuation or even actually saying the words out loud in vain.

Oh my God. That is included here as wrong and sinful to take the

Lord's name in vain, to use it flippantly. But the commandment obviously is much bigger than this. It's about bearing God's name as God's covenant people and therefore treating

God as weighty, real and near in everything that we say and promise.

To take God's name in vain is to treat it as empty, to attach it to words that are light, false, manipulative, or thoughtless.

Scripture repeatedly connects reverence for God's name with the vows and promises that we make before him.

In Ecclesiastes chapter five at verses two and four through six, we read of this and it particularly speaks with a bracing clarity about the ways in which we would make vows and promises before God.

In verse two, it says, be not rash with thy mouth and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon earth.

Therefore let thy words be few. In verses four and five, when thou vowest a vow unto

God, defer not to pay it, for he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed.

The better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

So essentially when you vow about a God, do not delay in paying it. It's better that you don't vow at all than that you should vow to him and not pay what you said you will do.

And then in verse six, suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou before the angel that it was an error.

Wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands? Let not your mouth lead you into sin, because the

God will be angry at the sound of your voice, having sinned against him by vowing a vow that you do not intend to keep.

And in that anger, God will destroy the work of your hands. And so we've noticed the repeated emphasis here is your voice.

Solomon is not merely worried about broken schedules, right, or missed expectations, but he's warning about a spiritual danger using religious speech while living in practical unbelief.

So what is a vow? Well, a vow is not every ordinary plan. It's not, I'll see you tomorrow, right?

A vow is a solemn promise made before God, calling on God as witness and judge.

And in scripture, vows can be part of worship, right? They can be part of repentance, covenant renewal, and even a desperate pleading.

The Bible doesn't forbid vows, but it does require that they be holy and reverent, that they be truthful and careful, and that they be kept without delay.

And why? Because vows are not mainly about self -expression, right? This isn't just us saying, we're gonna do this for you,

God. But a vow is about God's honor, which is why he takes it so seriously.

Again, Ecclesiastes chapter five and verse two grounds everything in a very simple reality. God is in heaven and thou upon the earth.

And that's not meant to crush the idea of a vow or a prayer as if to say that God is distant, but rather it is meant to correct casualness.

We're not talking into the air, but we are speaking to the living God. And so the third commandment confronts two opposite sins, careless words about God, speaking as though he is small, and grand spiritual promises to God, speaking as though we are strong.

Both treat God's name as something that we can pick up and set down whenever it suits us. And so let's take a look at some of the ordinary places that we break this commandment.

First of all, in worship, obviously we sing vows regularly, right? Within many hymns and psalms or promises, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.

Jesus, I, my cross have taken, right? Those can be true and beautiful things. But if we sing them thoughtlessly, we're training our mouths to say things that our lives do not intend.

And that's why we don't sing vows exclusively for what it's worth. Primarily, even we wanna sing of what

God says that he will do and who he is more than what we will do or who we are, what we want to do, so as not to take his name in vain.

But a simple practice when we are singing these vows is that before we do so, or as we are doing so, remember who you are addressing.

Be mindful of what you're saying. Let the fear of the Lord put steadiness in your voice.

In membership within the church, baptismal vows or marriage vows, when you take vows in the church, you're not making a sentimental statement, right?

You're entering a covenant. If you vow to support the worship and work of the church, then supporting the worship and work of the church shouldn't be treated like a burden or as something that you want recognition for.

It's faithfulness to your vow. If you vowed fidelity in marriage, that vow governs more than physical behavior.

It governs what you entertain in your thoughts, what you excuse in your habits and how quickly you repent when you sin.

If you vowed to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, that vow speaks into your calendar, to your discipline, your prayers, and your patience.

In crisis prayers as well, you know, we'll often say things like, Lord, if you get me out of this, I'll do this.

I'll move to Africa and become a missionary. Don't do that. But if you say you're gonna do it, take it seriously.

Again, Ecclesiastes warns us, do not bargain with God with hurried promises. God is not a lever to pull.

God is Father, He is King, and He is Judge. And so we pray boldly, but we do not use vows as spiritual panic language.

Fourth, in spiritual talk that covers spiritual laziness, it's another way that we do this. Again, Ecclesiastes, let not your mouth lead you into sin.

Sometimes the mouth leads the heart by giving it a religious mask. I'm praying about it. And what that really means is that we don't really want to do anything.

I don't want to do this thing. I'm kind of praying about it right now. Not saying this always is the case, but this is often the case.

Or God told me, when you mean that you just have a strong opinion about something. I'm doing it for you,

God, right? It just means that we want to be seen. I'm doing this for the Lord. We want people to notice us. This is taking the name of the

Lord in vain, attaching God's name to empty words. And so we need to correct ourselves here. We need to maintain a holy fear of God in our language.

And why? The larger catechism answers that in two parts. Why must vows be reverent and faithful?

To the glory of God, for the good of ourselves and others. For God's glory, right?

God's name is honored when God's people speak truthfully and keep covenant. And for the good of ourselves and others, vows create trust, right?

When Christian street promises are sacred, homes become steadier, the church becomes dependable, and our witness in the world becomes credible.

Broken vows do not only harm the one who vowed, but they spill outward. Now, some of us hear all this and maybe we feel the weight of failure.

You know, we said more than we've kept in our lives, but the answer in that failure for the Christian is not despair.

The answer is repentance and faith. Christ never took his father's name in vain. He kept covenant perfectly.

And at the cross, Christ bore the guilt of covenant breakers. And that means that we can confess now without hiding and start again without pretending.

So we can confess our sins, not in vain, but actually believing that God intends to bless us with the assurance of pardon that is to come in Christ.

And so the simple call is this, to be slow to speak, be careful with vows, keep what you promise. And when you fail, run quickly to Christ and make it right with God and with those that you've wronged.

And we do that first by confessing our sin in this moment to our God. And so if you are able,

I would ask you to please join me in kneeling in confession this day, where we do confess that we are a people, again, stubborn and stiff -necked in many ways.

And especially when it comes to speech, it is easy to just be unbridled with our tongues,

Lord, to want everyone to know what we think or what we're doing and why. But we ask that you would help us to be a people who would be a people who bridle our tongues or that we would not let what really is death, as the book of James says, death comes from, in the lies of hell even, spring forth from man through an unbridled tongue.

Lord, may you protect us from these things. May you help us to repent where it is that we maybe are a little too free in our speech.

May you keep us, Lord, keep us focused upon the things which are important, which you would have us to speak about, the things in which you would speak life into our community and into one another through us.

Lord, may we speak those things, those heavenly things. May you help us to do that within ourselves or with one another within this community here, within our communities and our workplaces.

May we speak life, may we be a people who speak life in Christ to the world around us.

Lord, help us, help us reveal to us the areas in which we fall short in this important command.

Lord, help us to cling unto you, to not minimize,

Lord, or lose sight of all that it is that you've done for us, your people. May we never take your name in vain, in particular even, or may we never take the name of Christian that we all bear.

And we never take that in vain. Lord, may we rather be a people committed to knowing, loving, and serving you in all that we do.

We ask these things in Jesus' name and amen. If you would please stand with me.

God is in heaven and we are on earth. As we let that reality, make our prayers warm, our worship sincere and our vows steady.

May the Lord teach us to honor his name, not only with our lips, but with faithful lives so that God is glorified and our neighbors are strengthened by the integrity of Christ's people, amen.

Now, as you have confessed your sins to your God in faith in his son, Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose again on your behalf, hear this, dear

Christian, and be assured that is convinced of your right standing before him, that because of what

Jesus Christ has done for you, not what you have for or against him, but that you have been forgiven by grace and through faith in him.

Hear this from Psalm 32, verses one through five, this Lord's day. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me.

My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have

I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and now forgave us the iniquity of my sin.