THE PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

By the grace of Your Spirit, O God, move us to seek You with all our hearts, that we might not stray from Your commands. By the power of Your Spirit, O Lord, hide Your Word in our hearts, that we might not sin against You. By the sanctifying work of Your Spirit within us, O Lord, may we be so conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ that we rejoice in following Your statutes, as one rejoices in great riches. And, in seeking Your glory, may we delight in Your decrees and not neglect Your Word; through the grace, mercy, and righteousness of our wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ, whose holy name is above all names. Amen.

THE ASCRIPTION OF PRAISE

"From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised!"

THE SERMON

Your name is very important to you; that’s the reason you guard it and take such good care of it. You don’t like to have your name misspelled or mispronounced, do you? Well, I have one of those names — "Mabray" — which is impossible to spell or to pronounce correctly the first time, if you don’t already know how to. "Mabray," pronounced with a little bit of a "southern drawl," easily becomes "Mabury," and then, of course, "Mayberry." So, I know how it is!

Your name is important to you, because it represents you, and carries the honor of your reputation. " Indeed, Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches." Your name also signifies the commitment of your will and the power of your resources. That’s the reason that you sign your name for credit card purchases, and sign your name to legal documents. Your signature commits you and your resources to fulfill the terms of the agreement that is being transacted. Your personal signature indicates that you — you and your reputation and your resources and your honor and dignity — stand behind whatever contract you are signing. Your name represents you: your identity, your reputation, and the power and commitment of your will.

If our own names have such great significance for us, how much more great is the significance of the name of God. The name of God represents His eternal identity, His wisdom, His power, His righteousness, and His truth. The name of God represents His very presence, His glory, and holiness. And so the Psalmist exclaims, "Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!" (Psalm 8:1); and, "from the rising of the sun unto its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised" (Psalm 113:3); and, "Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name" (Psalm 29:2). The name of the LORD signifies His faithfulness and His power, and so Psalm 9:10 says, "Those who know Your name will trust in You, for You, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek You," and so in time of adversity we affirm, "Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth" (Psalm 124:8). The name of the LORD signifies and represents God’s goodness, mercy, and love toward us, and so we rejoice in His name, and say in the words of Psalm 103, "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!"And we could go on and on and on with quotations of Scripture in which "the name of the LORD" represents, signifies, the LORD Himself — His infinite and eternal nature, His changelessness and faithfulness, His wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth, and His love, and grace and mercy revealed in Jesus Christ.

As I will continue to emphasize throughout this series, the Law of God is good, and is for our good, for our blessing! God has given us His Law because He loves us and cares for us and wants the best for us and our children. His Law is the Law of life and love and liberty, and He wants us and our children to live and to prosper and to thrive under His blessing, and so He has given to us His good Law — His moral law expressed in the Ten Commandments. And the third commandment teaches us to reverence the name of the Lord our God, that we might worship Him in spirit and in truth and call upon Him with confidence in His power and love. What a blessing it is — what a blessing it is — to have the true spiritual liberty in Christ to call upon the name of the Lord, to invoke the blessing of His presence upon us, to draw near to Him in prayer, to praise His name, and to come before the throne of grace with confidence in the name of Jesus Christ! What a blessing, and a gift of grace, it is that the Lord has claimed, redeemed, and called us to be His holy people, the people of His holy name, who are called by His name! And so, with great thanksgiving for the privilege and blessing of being able to call upon the name of the Lord for our salvation, we are to honor and hallow the name of the Lord, with reverence and godly fear. And so our good and gracious God had commanded us, "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." The Law of God is not the way of salvation, but it is the way of life for those who have been saved by Jesus Christ, and who, therefore seek to love the LORD their God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. And, if we do love the LORD our God, we will be careful not to take His name in vain.

Now think about this: what is the first petition of The Lord’s Prayer? When our Lord Jesus Christ taught us to pray, what is that first thing He taught us to pray for? .... "hallowed be Your name." The hallowing of His Father’s name, the reverencing of His Father’s name, the holy respect and care for His Father’s name was first in Jesus’ priorities of prayer. Is that true for us, as well? Do we have a holy, reverential regard for the name of God, as Jesus Himself has taught us? And you see, if we don’t have a holy, reverential regard for the name of the Lord, if we don’t revere His holy name, and bless His holy name, and treat His holy name with all the respect, and fear and trembling, due to Him who is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, then we will not revere and respect God Himself. If we treat God’s name lightly, we will treat Him lightly. If we disrespect and disregard God’s name, we will disrespect and disregard Him. When we take God’s name in vain, we spit in His face.

But we live in a society today in which the name of the Lord is taken in vain so often that we don’t even realize it anymore. Is it no "big deal" that the holy name of God should be profaned? God Himself has declared that "the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain." But what does it mean to take the name of the LORD in vain? The first thing that is usually mentioned is cursing with God’s name, as though God approved of or were a party to the vile and evil thoughts and words that are spoken. And so, to use God’s name in a vile and evil way is a gross sin. Why then, would we, as God’s people, invite and tolerate such language in our own homes, by way of the television shows and movies that we watch?

But taking the Lord’s name in vain is not only a matter of evil and vile abuse of His name by cursing. Whenever we treat the name of the Lord lightly, familiarly, carelessly, casually, without a due regard for His holiness and majesty, we have taken His name in vain. This is true even within contemporary evangelical Christianity. For example, has our zeal for evangelism, and our concern to "be relevant," and our commitment to communicate the gospel to American secular society led us Bible-believing Christians into taking the name of the Lord our God in vain, without realizing what we’re doing — by way of cutesy jingles, advertising slogans, bumper stickers, and billboards, which splatter the name of God as though it were another name-brand product to be bought and sold? Witnessing for the gospel in word and deed is one thing; advertising Jesus is another. Any light or trivial or clever use of God’s name or the name of Jesus Christ — even with so-called "good intentions" — by historic Christian standards, by historic Christian standards, up until recent times, would have been considered to be a violation of the third commandment. We have lost a due sense of God’s holiness, and have therefore lost a due sense of, and sensitivity to, the holiness of His name.

Another way in which the Lord’s name is taken in vain is by the insincere, hypocritical, or negligent, careless, casual taking of sacred vows — marriage vows, baptismal vows, church membership vows, ordination and installation vows of elders, deacons, and pastors. These all are sacred vows taken in the name of the Lord, and by these sacred vows we enter into covenantal commitments of holy responsibility and sacred duty. In this very service, vows of covenantal responsibility have been taken by parents and by you, the congregation, as a child was presented for the sacrament of baptism — baptism, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And our new members will take vows "in the name of the Lord" declaring their faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners and committing themselves to live as His disciples as faithful members of His church. And you, the congregation members, have taken those very vows, and will take a vow pledging your fellowship and Christian love to our new members, just as you vowed to help raise little Lauren to know and love the Lord.. These are sacred vows, spoken in the presence of God, in His name. And if we — as parents of baptized children, as professing Christians, and as church members, and church officers, and as husbands and wives joined in Christian marriage — if we are not faithfully fulfilling the vows we have taken in the name of the Lord, then we have taken the name of the Lord in vain, and we continue to do so until we repent of our covenant-breaking sins and turn anew to faithful obedience.

The same is true with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. When we receive the Lord’s Supper, we are, so to speak, taking upon ourselves the name of the Lord, declaring our trust in Him, and pledging our lives to Him. By receiving the Lord’s Supper we are declaring ourselves to be the Lord’s people, set apart from the world, in holy covenantal communion with God through Jesus Christ. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, so to speak, sacraments of God’s signature upon us, signifying God’s sovereign claim upon our lives and His sovereign ownership of our lives. But, you see, to have the sign of His name upon us in baptism, and to affirm His name upon us by receiving the Lord’s Supper, and then to live in willful disobedience, and careless disregard for His Word, is to take His name in vain by the way we live our lives. Therefore, as Second Timothy 2:19 says, "Let every one who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."

And so, you see, the third commandment calls us to Jesus Christ. The third commandment points us to Jesus Christ, because we know that we have taken the name of the Lord our God in vain, and so we know that need a Savior. We cannot save ourselves or earn or way into heaven or work our way into a right-standing with God by way of the Law, because we all have already broken the Law of God, and therefore we cannot be saved by the Law. And if you are burdened by the weight of your sin because you have taken the name of God in vain, and you want freedom from your guilt, then turn to Jesus Christ and receive the grace and mercy and cleansing He freely offers. Jesus Christ perfectly obeyed and fulfilled the Law of God in every way. He alone is perfectly sinless and perfectly righteous by the standard of the Law. And He Himself took our sins — our transgressions of the Law — upon Himself on the cross, and He bore the punishment for our sins. His body was broken on the cross because we have broken the Law of God, and our iniquities were laid upon Him. He was "obedient unto death, even death on a cross," and on that cross He suffered the righteous, holy wrath of God for every violation of the Law of God that you and I have ever committed in thought, word, and deed, and His suffering completely satisfied the justice of God against sin. Jesus did that to redeem us from the curse of our guilt under the Law. He did that to set us free from our sins, to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. And He did that in order to clothe us, to clothe us in His perfect righteousness. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that He took our sins upon Himself, and He offers to us His perfect righteousness to be received through faith in Him, so that, through Him, we have a right-standing with God, peace with God, communion with God, yes, even, indeed, adoption as the children of the living God. And so, as the born-again, Spirit-filled, adopted children of God, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, we have a new life to live for the glory of God, in grateful, faithful, joyful, love-inspired obedience to His commandments, following Jesus Christ our Savior. The Law of God is not the way of salvation, but it is the way of life for those who have been saved by Jesus Christ.

The third commandment points us to Jesus Christ because He is the One whose name is above all names. God has raised Him up and highly exalted Him, and has given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. To honor the name of God is to honor Jesus Christ. To honor and revere Jesus Christ is to honor and revere the holy name of God. And therefore, "whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him" (Colossians 3:17). And "may the name of our Lord Jesus be glorified in you" (2^nd Thessalonians 1:12). Amen.