You Shall Not Take God’s Name in Vain

A person's name and reputation are linked together. I mean, if I mention someone's name that you know, immediately there's all kinds of things that don't come to mind. You know, whether you like them or not, what they look like, what their attributes are. So a person's name and reputation are just linked. I mean, if I say Adolf Hitler, there's probably people in this room who have never seen a picture of Adolf Hitler, but if you know the name, you think evil because of, of course, his reputation as the type of person that he was.

If someone came along and started to slander your name, started to tell all kinds of bad stories about you, you would take it personally. I mean, if you found out that somebody here in the congregation was going around just lying about you, telling all kinds of false stories about you, and you would just make you furious, you would take it personally.

William Shakespeare put it this way. I was going to do this in an English accent, but I don't do English accents very well. It's actually from a fellow. He said, He who steals my purse steals trash. It says something, nothing, to his mind, to his, and it has been the slaves, the thousands. But he who filches for me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, makes me poor indeed. Oh, Bill tended to put a lot of words into something. What he's basically saying is that wealth doesn't determine who you are. Your name, your reputation, is more important.

I do like the word, filch. I'm going to try to find ways to use that word more often in language. We don't use that too much. What about God's name? What about God's name? How does he react when people put down his name? To smirk him, smear him, slander him? How does God react to that? Well, today we're going to do our series of sermons on the Ten Commandments. So today we're going to look at the Third Commandment. So let's go to Exodus 20, verse 7, because this has to do with the name of God.

Exodus 20, verse 7. This is in the New King James. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless, who takes his name in vain.

Vain simply means meaningless in a worthless way. He who takes God's name in a worthless way will suffer judgment from God. Now that's a very, very strong statement. God will not hold him guiltless. In other words, I will punish. I will judge a person who does this. Now why is this so important to God? You think about it. Here we have the ten foundational laws that you build a sense of morality off of, for all humanity.

And you would put in here, you know, don't use my name in vain. Why is that important? You know, God has many names and titles. When you go through the Bible, there's a lot of names and titles that God uses. And there are different languages. You have Hebrew, you have Aramaic, you have Greek, just in the Bible itself. Different names, different titles for God. God is not a name, it's a title. There's other ways in which God reveals Himself as a shadai, you know, that's an actual name. So He reveals Himself through these names and through these titles.

Now when we go through the first two of the commandments, and this third one is a progression here of the way God reveals Himself in these commandments. Remember the first commandment was that the God of Israel is the only God.

The first commandment commands faith, it commands belief, it commands commitment, it commands loyalty. And it has to do with freedom. I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. So we went through all the ramifications of that first commandment. The second commandment has to do with worship. That this only God determines how He will be worshiped. And He said, you can't use statues and icons to represent Me. He said, I'm beyond anything in the physical universe. And so we see that worship and how we worship God is very important to Him.

This third commandment has to do with how we honor and respect God. How we honor and respect God. When you look at this simple commandment, it's one sentence long, you'll find that it's actually translated in different ways in different versions of the Bible. We just read in the New King James where it says, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. In other words, you shouldn't use God's name in a meaningless way. The new international version translates this verse, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Jewish Publication Society says, you shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God.

Now those seem like dramatically different translations, but they're all an attempt to capture a profound concept inside this simple sentence that God gives about how to honor Him and respect Him in His name. I gave a Bible study here a couple months ago where I talked about how in the Jewish world, they won't even pronounce Orthodox. Jews will not pronounce the name of God. Even Jewish writers, Orthodox, Jewish writers in English, when they come to the word God in English, they'll put G and then a dash.

They're not going to misspell God. They're not going to misspell or mispronounce His name. It goes back to this. They do not want to offend God in any way. As I mentioned in the Bible study, when you see capital L-O-R-D in the Old Testament, in the King James, the New King James, and some of the other translations, what you're looking at in Hebrew are four consonants, Y-H-V-H.

There's no vowels. You can't pronounce it. In fact, today, no one's exactly sure how to pronounce it, because you can't take God's name in vain if you don't say it, which is the concept. Now, you do have in the Christian community a group of people who believe, in the Paul group, that you have to say the covenant name that God gave to Israel in order to have a right relationship with God. So you have to say Yahweh, or Yahweh, or Yah, or Hayuweh, depending on how they say it's supposed to be pronounced.

And God will only respond to you if you say His name in an exact way. Well, we can show, scripturally, that's not true either. This does not have to do with not using God's name. It can't, because the command is, you shall not misuse His name. That means you have to be using it. You have to be saying it.

You have to be doing something with it. And it doesn't have to do with pronunciation, because that's not part of the command. And it's not just God's one name. It's God's names. It's His titles. It's also His titles. So how do we break the third commandment then? To understand the third commandment, we have to understand how we break it.

I'm not just trying to approach this from the negative, because as we go through this, we will see there's things we have to do in the positive also. And we're talking about three ways that we can break this commandment. As we go through these, when we get to the third one, it is a way that most of us don't think about much. Most of us don't think about much. The first way that we can break this commandment is the obvious way.

If I asked all of you, how can we break the third commandment, this is what you would say. The first way we break this commandment is using God's names or titles in a common or irreverent way. In other words, we use His titles or names disrespectfully.

Now, this would, of course, include cursing God. This would obviously include what we call blasphemy, where you just curse God, you accuse God, or in the case of the atheists, you deny God. You deny His name, you deny His existence. Let's look at Leviticus 24. We'll just look at an example here of how they had to deal with this at the time of ancient Israel.

We're going to look at a number of examples in the Old Testament specifically. We'll look at something in the New Testament too, but Leviticus 24, verse 10. How important is it not to curse God, shake our fist at God? In this case, we'll see maybe not even denying God existence, like expressing a hatred towards God. Let's start at verse 30. Now, the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel, and his Israelite woman's son, and a man in Israel fought each other in a camp.

So here we have two people having a big fistfight in the camp. So probably hundreds of people gathered around them to watch what's going on. And the Israelite woman's son blasphemed the name of the Lord and cursed. So they brought him to Moses. His mother's name was Cholomath, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan. And they put him in custody that the mind of the Lord might be shown to them.

Now remember, as I said before, when you go through a lot of numbers, Deuteronomy, Lomiticus, you're looking at case law. They keep bringing new cases either to God or to Moses. Some cases God tells them what to do. Sometimes Moses tells them what to do, and they write these down. New case. We've got a man in a fight standing up and cursing God.

What do we do with that? The Lord spoke to Moses, verse 13, saying, Take outside the camp him who is cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stow him. The next verse says, Do this so that they will fear to misuse my name. How important is God's name? How important is His reputation?

Remember, a person's name and reputation are linked together. Here is a man among the group of people that God said, I call you out, and he placed his name on Israel. They were the people of his name. They were not to misuse his name, but this man cursed them, publicly.

And he was stowed for it. Showing us this is a real important issue. The principle of this law is that we are to honor and respect God with what we say. I'll show you a little bit. It's actually more than that. What this means is that not only cursing God or blasphemy, or denying God, that would be using his name in vain, but any time we use God's name in a frivolous manner, it's disrespectful to God.

Look at Leviticus 19. Leviticus 19, just over a few pages. My wife bought me a new Bible. I get lost in it sometimes. How do you get used to a Bible the way it's laid out? But when I was turning and pages were flying out of my Bible as I turned, she decided it was time to get me a new Bible. Leviticus 19, verse 12. And you shall not swear by my name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of the Lord of your God.

I am the Lord. You shall not profane His name. To use it in a profane manner, just frivolous. Now, this is a way that in our society, God's name is used in the name all the time.

Now we're into the obvious misuse of the name of God, in the way that all of us would say, yes, that's how people misuse God's name. And that's where they use the name of God, or Jesus, in a frivolous manner. How many times have you heard someone, they just say, oh my God, for no reason, because they're excited. Because, oh, I haven't talked to you on the phone for a long time.

Or, oh, I went outside and someone bumped my bumper, you know, left a scrape on my car. So they start yelling, oh my God, are they calling on God? Thank you. Because they're not.

I'm glad somebody's awake.

See, they're not calling on God, but they're using God's name, because there's the power behind that. I mean, if they just yelled, oh my friend, does that mean anything except the friend callers?

There's no power! You see what I mean? We have to use God for it to have power. So what are we actually doing? Or something happens, and the first thing people will do is they will yell out the name Jesus, or Jesus Christ. I hear people do that all the time. That is a frivolous use of His name. You would not do that with anybody else's name.

And it wouldn't mean anything to anybody else. It only means something because of the power of the name, and this is an abusive use of God. It is an abuse of God. You know, I work construction when I was a teenager. Boy, you hear a lot of stuff as a kid in a construction field. And you pick up a lot of things. It takes a long time to get that out of your head, you know?

Because that's the way men talk. And so what happens is, we not only use this in a frivolous way, but then what we do is we use God's name to damn something. To damn means to condemn something. And the original concept of the word damn was to condemn someone to hell. That was the original concept. So when you damn something in the name of God, you are calling on God to pass eternal judgment on whatever you are exclaiming that at. Well, people say, that's not what I really mean.

I mean, I really don't want God to destroy my toaster. I really don't want God to kill everybody on my favorite basketball team who just lost. But then I step back.

You are calling on the Creator of the universe and using His name to actually ask Him to do that. Now, aren't you glad He doesn't do it? It is an abuse of His name. And therefore, it is an abuse of Him. We wouldn't like it if somebody abused our names. But in our society, the abuse of the name of God is acceptable, which shows an absolute disrespect.

The core of that is a disrespect for God and who He is. It is a dishonoring of God. Now, this is where we get into euphemisms. Sometimes it is hard for young people to say, Oh, come on! Now you are really straining in gnats. Well, they wouldn't use that because that is an old saying. You are really being small about this. This isn't that important. But you have to realize, you know what I mean by euphemism?

It is where you use one word to mean another word. Instead of saying, Oh my God, you say, Oh my gosh. You say, well, that is not bad, except you have to realize in that it is hypocrisy.

I won't say God. I will say something sort of like God. And by saying that, I am really not using the name of God. Well, then what are you using? I am using something as a substitute for the name of God. Well, that is just hypocrisy. So, any time we substitute another word for God or Jesus and use that as an exclamation, or because you have lost your temper, you are still abusing God.

It is still disrespect for God. And this is why texting, O-M-G, is a serious offense. It doesn't seem like it. Well, what does O-M-G stand for? Put O-M-F. Oh, my friend! See what happens? Nobody cares. What does that mean? That's stupid. Right? It's O-M-G means something. Because why? There is power to God. So, we have to be careful if we truly respect God, do we want to abuse His name? We hear it on television all the time. We hear it in movies all the time.

And for all of us, we have to be careful because it slips out. Because we hear it, it gets processed, and when we get an excited state, we can use His name in vain. So that's the most obvious way. Okay. Well, I guess the sermon is over. We've dealt with using God's name in vain. Well, I want to take this a couple steps further.

The next way I'm going to talk about that we use God's name in vain may not seem obvious to us. And as I go through this, you might start to say, Yeah, but that has nothing to do with me today. But it does. Okay? Well, we're going to start with some Old Testament context. But we're going to work this into you and I today.

The second way we could use God's name in vain is by swearing an oath in the name of God, or in God's name, and failing to keep it. Swearing or taking an oath in God's name and failing to keep it.

An oath is when you swear, what you're saying is, when I'm telling you—and just think about how they do it in a court of law— there are still some courts in the United States where when you go up to do a testimony, they make you put your hand on the Bible, raise your hand, and say— they ask you, are you going to tell them, do you swear? Do you swear? Do you make an oath? To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God, or so help you God. And you say, I do. What does that come from?

That's an oath that says, I promise to tell the absolute truth, and if I do not, so help me God, because He's going to punish me. An oath, or a swearing, also has attached to it a curse for not doing it. Even in the courts of the land where you don't have to swear on the Bible, you have to swear to tell the truth. If you don't, it's called perjury, and they put you in jail.

When you make an oath or you swear, what you're saying is, one, either I'm telling the truth, or two, I promise to do what I'm doing. I promise to do this, and if I do not, I'm making an oath before God, that I should be punished by God. Now, you say, we don't make oaths too much in this world anymore, in our society, not the way they did in ancient Israel, and not the way they do even in Arab countries today. They make an oath for everything. Swear by God, that they'll fulfill things, that they'll do things. So, it's a very common thing in the Old Testament, but it's still important for us. I don't want us to miss this, that there's importance to this for us. Now, I'm going to make a... I'm making a differential here that may not be obvious all the time, but I'm doing it just for the sake of being able to work through what we're going to talk about. An oath and a vow are somewhat the same, but there can be a subtle difference.

When you make an oath, it can be a promise you make between you and God, a covenant you make between you and God, or it can be a covenant that you make between you and another person, or a swearing that you're going to tell the truth, and you're asking God to put His stamp of seal on. What you're doing is, is you're asking God to put His name on your agreement.

So help me, God. And God is supposed to put His stamp of seal on it and say, my name is on what you're doing.

So people all the time in the Bible, you will see them say... Now, a vow is a little different. A vow is a promise to do something with God, to give Him something. That's where you'll see in the Bible, people say, God, if I don't, you know, avenge my enemy, or avenge against my enemy, then the same thing happened to me, so help me God, or in the name of God. Or they'll take a vow, they'll bring an offering to God. Here, I vow to you to give you praises. David talks about in one of the Psalms that he came to God every day to fulfill his vows. So he had made a vow of praising and worshiping God every day, and he had to show up and do it. It was a promise he made to God. The important thing is, God holds these promises very personally. Now, let's look at a promise between two people here. Let's go to Deuteronomy 23. When you go through the Old Testament, you will see that there are different ways in which people made oaths. There were rituals involved in it. But this one is interesting because it involved a ritual that we still will do today in a legal sense. Deuteronomy 23. This is when Abram went out. I'm sorry, Exodus 23. Why did I get you all over the place? X. Now, let's not go there yet. Let's go to Deuteronomy 23. I'm taking you to two different places. It's my wife's fault for giving me this new Bible. Deuteronomy 23. Let's look at the law here before I go to an example. Deuteronomy 23 verse 21. So here's a vow. Remember an oath? It can be a legal oath. It can be a covenant made between a person and another person. It can be a covenant between the person and God. But in the context we're talking about, these covenants are made with God's stamp. You're saying, God, we promised this and we want God to seal this. This is done in the name of God. A vow is you go and you tell God, I'm going to give you 10% plus 2% more for the rest of my life. Now that's a vow. And I promise this. A vow that I'll do this. Verse 21. When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you. The point he makes is, when you and I make a vow to God, God personally takes it personal. Remember when you were a child and the first time an adult lied to you, or you felt like an adult lied to you? Think of what it's like now when you feel like somebody lies to you. Oh, yeah. The plumber says, I'll be over there at 10 o'clock and they don't show up for three days.

Right? Think of what you feel like. As a human being, we are sometimes very careful about our commitments to other human beings. But we always seem to think God will understand.

Making a vow to God, making a promise to God. When you make a vow, he says, I place my name on your vow. If we do not do it, it is sin.

The rest of this law is what I find fascinating, because look what it says in verse 22. But if you abstain from bowing, it shall not be a sin to you.

I mean, the law says, if you're going to make a promise to God, you had better do it, because he will hold you responsible for any promise you made to him. And it's good not to make promises to God.

Don't make promises to God. You don't have to make promises to God. It's much better to go to God and say, with your help, I'm going to try real hard, and we'll try to do this.

But even then, that's what you've committed to do. He takes it personally.

So we can see that a vow is very important to God. Now, an oath is a binding agreement in which you call on God to bind it.

Now, this is the example I want to go to in Genesis. Genesis 14. I was getting ahead of myself here before. Genesis 14.

So we see the law about vowels. Let's look at an example of an oath. This was the case where Abram had defeated the armies that had come and taken the people of Sodom, including Lot and his family, and captured them and taken them off as slaves. And so Abram gets his service together. They go defeat these armies, and they take all the people of Sodom, and they're taking them back home. And let's just pick it up in verse 22.

But Abram said to the king of Sodom, well, let's just look at verse 21 to get the context. Now, the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the persons and take the goods for yourself. In other words, okay, you and your servants defeated this army. You've released my people. Send the people back home.

You could keep all their belongings. Keep all the spoils of the battle. You deserved it. You're the one who fought the battle. But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth, and I will take nothing from a thread to a sandal strap, that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abram rich.

He goes on to say, except for the food for my warriors, they get to eat, but that's all I'm going to take. But notice, I raised my hand. This is just like raising your hand in court. He says, I took an oath. I took an oath to the Lord God Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth, and I will take nothing. There's an oath. And he gave back to the king of Sodom all of the people and all their possessions. It took nothing. And God battled that oath. The seriousness of an oath is so important because, remember, he raised his hand to whom?

To God Most High. So I haven't made an oath to God. Well, actually, you have. Can anybody think of maybe an oath or two that we've all made to God? Somebody. Baptism is an oath you and I made with God. It's covenant. And we agreed to something. We made an oath. How about another oath? Marriage. Marriage. Those are two oaths that we have made before God. And in both cases, we asked God to place His name on our marriage and on ourselves.

I want you to really think about that a minute. We made two oaths before God, in which we asked Him to place His name on our marriages and on ourselves.

And we're going to talk about taking God's name in vain. I want to take you to an example. We're going to go through this example, and then a little later, towards the end of the sermon, I'm going to wrap it up by showing you the results of the decisions made in this example. Let's go to Joshua 9. Joshua 9. Take a little time to read this simply because I want to get all the details here.

There's a lot of important details in this passage. This is where Joshua is leading the Israelites' armies through the land of Canaan. Now remember, God had given them a command. They were to kill or drive out everybody in the land. Now that's a command, right? So they're given a command from God. They go through and either kill or drive out everybody. They came to pass when all the kings were on this side of the Jordan in the hills and in the low land, and all the coasts of the great sea toward Lebanon.

The Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, the Jebusite, the Vegemite. Yeah, you're pretty asleep. Heard about it. Now, I think I've done that before. It's so fun the second time. They were together to fight with Joshua and Israel with one accord. But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard that Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they worked craftily together and went and pretended to be ambassadors. They took old sacks of their donkeys, old wine skins torn and mended, old apart sandals on their feet, and old garments on themselves.

All the bread of their provisions were dry and moldy. And they went to Joshua, to the camp of Gilgal, and they said to him, and to the men of Israel, we have come from a far country, now therefore make it covenant with us. So here they are marching through Canaan, and a group of people show up. And this group of people, I mean, they're dusty, their clothes are worn out, their sandals are just worn down to practically nothing.

A little bit of food they have is covered with mold. I mean, they've been on the road for days and days and days. And they show up and they say, we would like to make a covenant, swear an oath between us. 7. The men of Israel said to the Hivites, Perhaps you dwell among us. So how can we make a covenant with you? Now the first thing is, the leaders of Israel, their first reaction was, this is a trick.

This is real, real important for us to remember in the context of a lot of things we do in life. We will go against what we really know is right, because it's not what we want. This is a trick. We know this is a trick. But they said to Joshua, we're your servants. In other words, we're here, you can kill us, you can do whatever you want with us.

Because when these guys showed up, this caravan showed up, I can guarantee you what happened. A group of Israeli soldiers went out and basically almost stripped them down naked. Went through everything in their sacks all over their animals, checked out everything, grabbed their weapons, right? And now they're standing before Joshua. They said, look, we're your servants. I mean, we came here knowing you can kill us, make us slaves, do whatever you want with us. And Joshua said to them, who are you and where do you come from? They're slain. So they said to him, from a very far country, your servants have come.

Because of the name of the Lord your God. We have come here because of the name of the Lord your God. The name of your God has reached us, and He's the great God, and He's above all gods, and He's better than our gods. And because of Him we have come to you. That was about the only thing they said here that's true. For we have heard of His fame and all that He did in Egypt, and all that He has done to the two kings of the Amorites.

So he goes on and they say, look, we've seen what your God does. Verse 11, Therefore our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us, saying, Take provisions with you for the journey, and go to meet them, and say to them, We are your servants. Now therefore make a covenant with us. This bread of ours we took hot from our provision, from our houses, or for our provision from our houses on the day that we departed to come to you.

But now look as dry and moldy, and these wineskins, which we were filled were new, and now see they are torn. And these are garments that our sandals have become old because of the very long journey. The demand of Israel took some of their provisions, but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. And it's real important right there. This was an easy decision. You know, they took the hard decisions to God, but this was pretty easy.

These people came from a long ways. I mean, we felt real uncomfortable at first, but there's just a lot of poof here. They came from a long ways. It says, So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them, to let them live. And the rulers of the congregation swore to them. Verse 16, And it happened at the end of three days, after they made a covenant with them, that they heard they were neighbors. These were just a handful of cities just down the way a little bit.

They were about to march on these cities and destroy them. And these people knew it. But they came and said, In the name of your God is why we're here. And so they had sworn to them. Now, think of the bind that they're in.

They are caught between two commandments. I command you to go through the entire land and kill everybody. And the commandments do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. If you swear, you must do it. If you swear the name of God. Because if you do not, God will punish you. Wouldn't it be an interesting debate for us all to get together now and try to figure out which commandment we have to keep?

Which commandment do we keep? Because if you kill them, you break the commandment to keep your oath. If you keep the oath, you break the commandment to kill them. That's the bind that their poor decision-making put them into. And you know what? Our poor decision-making will do the same thing. Sometimes it will put us in a position where we're caught now between two of God's instructions. We'll be trapped between two of God's instructions because we made some bad decisions along the way. This is where they are. What I find interesting here in verse 18, But the children of Israel did not attack them because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel, and the congregation complained against the rulers.

So now you have Joshua faced with a possible uprising of his own army. Whoa, whoa, whoa! God told us to kill all of them or drive them out. You're telling us you made an agreement with the people that God said to destroy? You're asking us to go against God. Besides, it can't be binding. Just think of the arguments. It was fraud. They lied to you. You can't have a binding contract where there's fraud involved.

And you know, in a legal sense, you can't. But this wasn't just a legal agreement. Let's look at how Joshua saw this. Verse 19, Then all the rulers said to the congregation, We have sworn to them by the Lord God of Israel. Now we asked God to put His seal on this agreement. This was an oath in which God bowed in heaven. This wasn't just an agreement between two peoples. We did this in the name. They said that it would have gone through a ritual agreement, and they would have said, In the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, we agree and we bind to do this, and we place His name on it.

Now therefore, we may not touch them. This we will do to them. We will let them live, lest wrath be upon us because of the oath which we swore to them. The ruler said to them, Let them live, but let them be woodcutters and water-carriers for all the congregation, as the rulers had promised them. In other words, when these people came, the Gibeonites came, they said, We'll just be your servants.

And the Israelites now said, Joshua and the rulers of Israel said, You know what? You tricked us. For the name of God, we will not kill you, but you will be our slaves. At the end of the chapter, it says, Not only will you be our slaves, because they had another problem. Why did God tell them to kill all the people in Canaan? Because they would convince them to follow their gods.

So guess what they did with the Gibeonites? They became the manual laborers at the tabernacle. They had to cut all the wood, get all the water. They couldn't go in and serve in the tabernacle, because only the Levites could do that. But they became the ones who did all the manual labor it took. To keep that tabernacle going seven days a week was a lot of work. And the Gibeonites were the slaves who brought up the wood, the water. Whatever the Levites needed, outside that tabernacle, they sent, they got. Now it stops there. Now two things that are very interesting in here that stops.

This passage alone doesn't tell us what God's decision was. How did God look at all this? It only tells us how Joshua worked it out. Well, Joshua and the leaders of Israel got him in the problem in the first place. So, you know, was this a good solution to the problem? They decided that the law they had to follow was that if the name of God is placed on an oath, they cannot break that oath.

But these people, because they lied, would be slaves. What's interesting is all through the book of Joshua and Judges, Israel has no problem with the Givianites. They just didn't disappear from history. Now they do reappear in history centuries later. We'll go to that in a minute.

Because we still have to figure out how did God look at this? How did God look at this? Before I go there, let's look at how Jesus looks at this. Let's go to Matthew 5. Matthew 5. Verse 33. In the Sermon on the Mount, He says, That was the law. Jesus says, They were using euphemisms. I'm not going to swear by Yahweh.

I can't even say Yahweh. I will swear by the throne of heaven. Why would you say that? Where is God? You're still calling upon the power of God. If I do not do this, may God punish me. If I do not do this, I will be cursed. You might raise a hand and say it. So it's still swearing. It's still taking an oath. And it's still doing it in His name.

He says, Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. He says, don't swear by any like yourself. I promise to do this, or my eyes will fall out. I promise to do this at no matter what personal cost. What happens if you get sick the next day? You can't fulfill what you promise to do.

Don't swear. Tell people, this is what I'm going to try to do and then be absolutely honest. Your word has to be good, but if we're swearing, we're asking God to be involved. We're asking Him to put His name on what we're doing. He says, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, for whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

In other words, when we get into asking God to bind us and these oaths, we are setting ourselves up to be used by Satan. Okay. But as I said, there's at least two oaths that we make before God. And it's very important because I want to look at the marriage oath first and then I want to go into our third way we break this because this sets up into what I'm going to discuss next.

We say, okay, swearing an oath and not obeying it or not keeping it. There are specific reasons for divorce in the Scripture, but they are very specific. In the Church of God, when we do frivolous divorce, we are taking the name of the Lord our God in vain because we have asked God to place His name on the marriage. See, when you do a marriage, when we do a marriage, we call them marriage vows.

Actually, technically, it's a marriage oath and a marriage vow. The vow is the God. The oath is between each other. We promise to do God's marriage, and then you ask God to bind you. Right? At every marriage, we ask God to bind them. What we're doing is we're asking God to place His name on this marriage. It now becomes an oath before God. And a vow!

I will fulfill this marriage. And that's why many times people will come to me about marriage and they'll say, I want to get divorced. And my first thing is, have you fulfilled your part of the marriage vow? And the first thing they say is, well, wait a minute, let me talk to you about my wife. And, no, no, no. Have you fulfilled? Can you stand before the Almighty God and say, I have fulfilled my part? And I have not yet had one person say to me the first time they talked to me, yes. I've had them say, well, part of it. Well, go fulfill all of it. Not because, well, if I do that, I'm letting my wife win.

Or I'm saying it's okay if she's not a good wife. No? Because you made a vow to God to do that. We'll discuss your mate's vow later. Do your vow first? I've literally had people come back and say, those of my marriage problems are gone.

Yeah. Start to fulfill your part of the vow. We make a vow to participate in frivolous divorce as Christians, as taking the name of the Lord our God in vain. You say, well, who bowed your marriage? Once again, there are certain reasons for divorce. Scriptural reasons.

I'm not talking about those. But I do believe in the Church of God today, over the last 20 years, frivolous divorce has become much more common than it should. And I do believe there are people suffering curses from God, and I'm not sure if the Church as a whole were not suffering curses from God because of it. So we have to be very careful about this.

Once again, there are reasons for divorce. Scriptural reasons. So you can't go around judging everybody who's been divorced. We can't do that. But we also must have to look at, are we using His name in vain? Because in the Old Testament, for God to place His name on an oath was serious business, and I really don't think He's changed. So that brings us to our third reason.

And that is representing God's name in a degrading or false manner. Representing God's name in a degrading or false manner. You and I take on the name. If someone asked you, what is your religion? You would say, I am a Christian. I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. You have taken a title of Jesus and placed it upon your... Well, the Bible places it on us. You are a Christian. The ancient Israelites were called the people of God. What is the church called? The people of God. The family of God.

God has placed His name on us. When you were baptized, He stamped, just like an ancient king. You would take a seal and make a stamp and say, that is mine. He stamped you and said, you are mine. My name is on you. I don't know about you, but this part of this... I really wanted to stop after point number two. Point number three bothers me because I break this commandment. Because there are times when I have not represented God in a proper way.

There have been times in my life, or times that I want to think of, that I have not represented God in a proper way. And every time I do, since His name is on me, I take His name and name. Think about that. Let's go back to Exodus 20 for a minute here. Exodus 20. There's a little word here that might help us see this. Verse 7. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold Him guiltless who takes His name in vain. In other words, God will punish. Now, God is always open for repentance, but He's trying to show how important this is.

We can't take it lightly. Well, I don't go around damning things in God's name, so I don't use His name in vain. And okay, I haven't made any oaths, except, well, my marriage oath, but I have a good marriage. Okay. But you have God's name stamped on you. God's reputation rides with us. You ever think about that? Fortunately, God's bigger than us. We would not put up with what He puts up with. But His reputation rides with us.

I think Paul in Romans telling the church there, the name of God is blasphemed in the world because of your example. He just chides that church. The world blasphemes God because of you. That's a scary thing. I don't know if it's ever blasphemed God because of me. Because I've represented God in such a poorly, poor manner.

You know, the word take. Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. In Hebrew, that word has a wide variety of meanings. You know how some words have a lot of uses? You know, to take literally is to pick something up, to take something, right? To grasp something. So do not misuse... That's the reason why the NIV says, do not misuse. Do not grab this name and misuse it. But you know, it can also be translated carry.

I guess probably the number one way is translate. Do not carry the name of the Lord your God in vain. Or bear. Or accept. We carry this name. You know, take obviously...we can think of that in terms of speaking. I take his name and I speak it wrongly. But this is really beyond that. That is part of it.

That is the most obvious part of it. I can take his name and speak it. But I take his name and I carry it. He stamped his name on us. The Almighty God. The ruler of the universe. Jesus Christ says, you are mine. You are Christian. And he stamps it on us.

And everybody is supposed to say it. How do we represent the oath that we took? How do we represent the oath that we took in baptism? But he stamped his name on us. Remember, we talked about the situation in Joshua. And we saw how Joshua worked out the problem. But it doesn't tell us how God solved the problem. Right? Which commandment were they to obey? Kill the Gibeonites or uphold the fact that they had made an oath with his name on it? Because that was their argument. If they had just made an oath without the name of God, they could have said, well, they defrauded us.

This legal action is null and void. Right? The poor Gibeonites would have deserved it. They had nothing to stand on if it was just a legal agreement. Well, we made a legal agreement. You people committed fraud. Don't kill all of them. Because that's what God says to do. But they said, we have done this in the name of God. We invoked Him to seal this. What am I to do? What are we to do? Well, they took them and they made them slaves. And specifically slaves to God taking care of the tabernacle.

Let's jump ahead 400 years. 2 Samuel. We're going to jump ahead about 400 years. I didn't figure it up exactly. But we got the time of Joshua, all the time of Judges, and Saul's rule, and now we're in the David's rule. 2 Samuel 21. David has a problem. He's king and there has been famine in Israel for three years. Three years has been a famine. 2 Samuel 21 verse 1. Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.

And David inquired of the Lord, why are you cursing us? There was a curse. He figured out when this famine went on and on, it was like, okay, this isn't just some normal drought problem. This is from God. He's withdrawing a blessing for us. Why is he withdrawing this blessing? So after three years, he goes to God. He says, what have we done wrong? And the Lord answered, it is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house because he killed the Gibeonites.

What? Now see, there's no other place the Bible tells us about this. But Saul and his house, Saul and his sons and probably his grandsons, they had tried to exterminate, commit genocide. Thank you. My brain stopped for a minute. Thank you. My genocide against the Gibeonites. Now remember, this is 400 years after Joshua. Because he killed the Gibeonites, so the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now there's a few left, so David brings them in.

Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites. The children of Israel had sworn protection to them, but Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah. There's something real interesting here.

Saul did this because of his zeal for Israel. What was God's command to Joshua? Kill them all or drive them out. 400 years later, Saul must have said, you know what? Joshua made a mistake. He didn't obey God. I'm going to obey God. We're going to get rid of all these Gibeonites. We're going to kill them off like they were supposed to do it, and we'll be pleasing to God.

So you think, well, wow! He's doing what God originally told Joshua to do. It seems like God would bless Saul. But he's not. Because Joshua had made an agreement in the name of the Lord God of Israel. And the Lord God of Israel had sealed that agreement, just like he did with you and me in baptism.

And just like he does our marriages. He sealed it. And he said, this has my seal on. This is my name on this. This is my name on these people. This is my name on their marriage. This is my name on their family. This is my name on their foreheads. He had sealed the agreement. What's interesting here is David now has a problem.

For the first time in 400 years, the Israelites had broken the agreement, not the Gabbianites. So here are the bad guys in the story that David has to go to and say, why do we do to make this right? We broke our side of the agreement. And God is doing what? I want you to understand. God said, I am cursing Israel because you started to kill the Gabbianites 400 years later.

God was cursing Israel for breaking a covenant made in His name.

Why? It's His covenant now.

See, when we make a covenant in His name, it's His now.

And the Israelites had broken it.

Verse 3, Therefore David said to the Gabbianites, What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? We've got to get back where God is blessing Israel, but we have to appease you first. Now remember, these are the slaves.

These are the slaves.

And the Gabbianites said to them, We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house. Nor shall you kill any man in Israel for us. So here's the two things we don't want. We don't want reparations. We don't want you to give us money for all the people that were killed. We don't want that. That solves nothing. And we don't want you, you know, just to go around and kill a bunch of soldiers for us or whatever. Remember who did this? Saul and the house of Saul. It was Saul and his family that carried this out. And he said, David says, Whatever you say, I will do for you. My people broke the covenant. Here's the king begging slaves. What is it you want me to do? Because the covenant with the Lord's name on it was broken. And the answer to king asked for the man who consumed us and plotted against this, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel. Let seven of his descendants be delivered to us. They will hang them before the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord chose. They said, we don't want a manhunt. We don't want reparations. All we want is seven of his descendants. And we're going to go to his hometown, and we're going to hang them in the square. We don't even want Israelites to do it. We just want to let them know. We have an agreement with your God. And here's what happens when you break the agreement we have with your God. What's the rest of this verse say? And the king said, I will give them. David turned over seven of his own people to a group of slaves to be publicly hung. Why? Because God was cursing them. Why was God cursing them? Because they made an agreement that said at oath, we will do this or God will punish us. And God said, 400 years later they broke it. And he said, okay. And you think about that, and you think in terms of who we are. God called ancient Israel his people. He put his name on them. God calls the church his people. And this is the physical bloodline. The church of God has made up all kinds of people. We're made up of all kinds of people to come together. We come together because God chooses us to place his name on us. So that we can be part of what? The body of Christ. So that we can be Christians. So that we can carry his name in this world. Boy, I tell you, this Third Commandment is a whole lot harder than not saying, oh gosh. We're not typing OMG. That's part of it, but it's a lot harder than that. This is about we carry the name of God. How you and I honor God, his name, the name of Jesus Christ, is exhibited every day in how we talk, but also in how we act, and how we represent God's name in the world around us. You know, when I finished this, I wrote down a little prayer that I'm going to pray once in a while that I'm going to read to God. So I'll read you. I'm going to finish by reading the – just one sentence prayer. I wrote down, Father, help me not to misuse your name in any way and to carry your name in a way that honors and glorifies you.