Intro
Open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20 today as we continue our Summer Series entitled “Love God , Love your Neighbor” We are examining the 10 Commandments—God’s moral law—while focusing on Jesus is summary of the commandments found in the New Testament Gospels. The commandments teach us about God identity.
They also serve guide us, to correct us, to protect us and most importantly, point us to our need for a Savior.
God sent Jesus to fulfill the law by keeping it perfectly for us. And His life and words help us bring more clarity to God’s commands. It is through the biblical record of Jesus’ life we see the truest meaning and depth of God’s commands.Jesus summarized the commandments when He was asked this question.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:36-39)
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 which is known as the Shema. Practicing Jews—still to this day—recite the Shema both in the morning and evening and consider it to be one of their most sacred duties. Here Jesus says it is the to love God and Love our Neighbor is “greatest commandment in the Law." It is in a genuine love for God and our neighbor that the law finds its fulfillment. Jesus serves as our perfect example of what it means to love God with all our heart, mind and soul. Jesus loved and worshiped God with His whole heart, His mind was set on His Father’s mission and soul was surrendered to the Father’s plan of redemption for His people. Jesus also serves as our perfect example of what it means to love our neighbor. His love for his neighbor goes so deep that he is willing to give up his very life for us.
Today we come to the third commandment. In a sermon is entitled: Worship: God’s Name is Holy
If you're able we stand as we open up God's word today? I pray that you will hear the word of the Lord.
READ FROM THE BIBLE
And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“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. (Exodus 20:1-7)
This is the word of our LORD, Amen.
PRAY
The big truth is: True worship to the LORD seeks to honor the name above all names, Jesus Christ our LORD.
We don’t choose our names. God has given our parents the authority to name their children. My full name is Michael Taylor Larsen. These names have meaning. I asked my dad this week about who I was named after.
Michael was the name of a dear friend of my dad’s who’s family took him in his senior year of high school and cared for him until he graduated. My middle name, Taylor was given to me by my mom who named me after her brother, my uncle Fred. Uncle Fred’s full name was Fred Taylor James. The James family name find their roots in the James—Younger Gang. The James—Younger gang was the notorious 19 century gang of American outlaws that included my great, great, uncle “the outlaw Jesse James”. I tell you that to say this, names are carriers of meaning. When Jesse’s parents rightfully used their God given authority to name their boy I bet they never thought that his name will go down in history as one of American’s notorious outlaws.
We come to our text today and God tells us His name. What is unique about God's true name is that it was chosen and revealed by God himself. Because God preexisted His creation we don't have the right to tell him who he is.
Thankfully God takes it upon himself to tell us who he is. God speaks to Moses in the third person to shine a spotlight on His name. Let read Exodus 20 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. (Exodus 20:1-7)
LORD in the Hebrew was written with four letters YHWH. It is where we get the the word Yahweh. YHWH Literally means “I am who I am." This is not the first time we see God use this name for Himself in Exodus.
In Exodus 3 God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Telling him that he was going to send Moses back to Egypt to lead the Israelites out of captivity.
Moses asked God, “If they ask me, ‘What is Your name?’ what shall I say to them? (Exodus 3:13)
And here is how God answered Moses
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. (Exodus 3:14-15)
When we begin to unpack the meaning of God’s name we will learn quickly that it is more than just a name. This name Yahweh reveals His identity. Yahweh—I AM WHO I AM—speaks to God's Holiness. In giving Himself this name that God sets Himself apart from every name because it indicates before their was anything to be named, God was. In this name God says He is self-existence, self-sufficient and supremely sovereign. He continues to identify Himself in this sentence by saying He is “your God”.
The LORD your God
This Holy God who is completely set apart from creation is the God claims authority over creation. This is super important as read this command in the context of the book of Exodus. Exodus begins with several generations of God’s people in enslaved in Egypt by Pharaoh. Egypt was one of the most polytheistic cultures ever. Polytheism is simply the worship of many gods. These gods had many names. The Egyptians worshiped the gods of the fields and rivers, gods of the light and darkness, gods of the sun and weather. The Egyptians worshiped the goddesses of love and war and they would create idols of these gods bowing down and sacrificing. Over the centuries of captivity, God’s people began to worship these gods too.
God promised to save His people and remembering His covenant He sent Moses to back to Egypt Pharaoh demanding that he let God's people go. Pharaoh refused to let them go so God sends 10 plagues down on Egypt, defeating the most prominent gods that they worshipped, proving He was the one true God of all creation. After the Passover and the death of Pharaoh’s first born God's people were released. But there release did result in the complete obedience to God. God’s people where still heavily influenced by their past. Hence, the need for Exodus 20—the ten commandments—God’s moral law. And the call to keep the commandments through repentance and faith.
The 1st commandment directs us to worship the correct God. While the 2nd, 3rd and 4th commandments teaches us how to worship God correctly. The Israelites had adopted such a small view of God from their experiences of worshiping so many different gods in Egypt. Israelites found it easy to minimize the God who delivered them from Egypt. Speaking of the Israelites the Psalmist wrote this in Psalms 106
Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make known his mighty power. (Psalm 106:6-8)
God saved these people for the sake of His name. God makes known the mighty power of the One True God, the Holy, self-existence, self-sufficient, supremely sovereign, God of creation, and promised redeemer of His people. And because of that He deserves reverence and respect of His people, so I command…
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. (Exodus 20:1-7)
JESUS NAME
It is in the name of Jesus that all the promises attributed to the name of God in the Old Testament find there fulfillment. It was Jesus who appeared to Moses and identified himself as Yahweh. In John 8 He said;
“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58)
Jesus is one with the One with God Father and God with the Spirit who is self-existence, self-sufficient and supremely sovereign. There so are many ways that the LORD’s name can be taken in vain.
And the Church tends to steer this subject out to expose how the world so easily takes the Lords name in vain.
It is true that the world does take the Lord’s in vain. It is hard to turn on the television without hearing God’s name used every way but the correct way. But the shouldn't be surprised by that. Jesus said the world does not know and cannot see the Lord. He says
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (John 14:15-17)
We cannot expect the world to worship God and hold His name in high regard. This is the honor, privilege and responsibility God gives to His church.The problem lies in the fact that we could hardly tell the church from the world today. When the name of our God has little to no meaning our worship turns casual, careless, and insincere and we worship the name of the Lord in vain. But when we worship God in Spirit and truth. Speaking to the Samaritan woman Jesus said. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:22-24)
To worship God correctly we first have to understand that God is spirit. Our God, He is Yahweh who transcends all of creation, He is self-existent, self-sufficient, supremely sovereign because He is spirit nothing in this world deserves our worship and to worship God rightly we have to do it in truth.
God has revealed Himself to us in scripture and it is in Jesus that we find the fullness of God. In Colossians 2 Paul writes;
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)
There is not a person that has ever lived—apart from Christ—that has never taken the Lord’s name in vain in some fashion or another. And the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. I believe the greatest way that we can take his name in vain is by not believing in the name of Jesus Christ. Because it is the very name of Jesus that we find forgiveness of sin and the cleansing from all unrighteousness. Because of God’s steadfast love and patience we still have the opportunity to repent of our sin and place our faith in Jesus. John writes
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
And Jesus says;
So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32-33)
My prayer is that if you are not a Christian that you will become one today by confessing your faith in Jesus, repenting of your sin and trusting Him as Lord and Savior. Jesus obeyed God to is very death on the cross where he paid for all of our sins. It was on the cross that the demands of the law where satisfied. And now we have the freedom to pursue Christ in the worship his holy, holy, holy, name. The name that is above every name.
We will close with the apostle Paul's words to the Philippians in chapter 2:
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:1-11).
Every person in every age will either confess Jesus as Lord. You will confess His Holy name in this life and receive salvation, sanctification, and justification. Living a life that worships His name. Or you will confess Jesus as Lord in the next, in which it will be too late. There will be a day of Judgment where many will found guilty of taking the Jesus’ Holy name in vain.
PRAY
