Sermon by Frank Rose

Lessons: Matthew 5:33-37: True Christian Religion 237-238

Sermon: Of all the Ten Commandments which one is taken the most lightly or people seem to worry the least about breaking?

To hear people talk you would think that the least attention is paid to the second commandment: thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. People use God’s name very carelessly, sometimes in anger, often without any real thought of what they are saying. So it could be that this second commandment is the one that is regarded as the least important of all the ten.

Which of the commandments is given with the greatest earnestness? Which commandment has the heaviest message? Is it not the same commandment? “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.” There is a threat attached to this second commandment.

Why the contrast? Why, when the second commandment is given so forcefully, is it so commonly broken? We need to understand just what is meant by taking the Lord’s name in vain. In ancient times if a small tribe wanted to become a part of a larger kingdom, they might send messengers to the kingdom and eventually the king would arrive with great pomp, announce his name, remind them of the things that he had done for them and begin to set out the regulations, or the statutes which they would have to follow if they were going to be part of his kingdom. And the very first of these statutes is that if they were to be part of the kingdom they could not acknowledge any other king. The same is true if we want to be a part of the kingdom of heaven : there should be no other gods before the Lord’s face.

The second commandment is that if they are going to become part of the kingdom, they should honor the name of the king. Especially in situations in which they are making some kind of solemn statement, oath or promise.

We use the word “swear” to mean to use bad language. But originally the word “swear” meant to take an oath or state something very solemnly. As in a court of law a person might swear that the testimony he or she is about to give is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That’s a very solemn statement and therefore it is made in the name of God or with the hand on the Bible. That was the original concept of swearing. To swear then is to make a solemn statement. Of course over time people began to associate the word “swear” more with the abuse of people talking and using the name of God to reinforce something that often is not important at all, possibly just to express anger or disappointment. The original concept was that if people were going to make an oath and they were going to appeal to the name of God, they should do so reverently, with a clear understanding of what they were doing; they were not to take it lightly. This is because the name has such tremendous power. Sometimes we forget the power that is involved in names.

There’s a wonderful story in the book of Acts about Paul. Paul began as a persecutor of the Christians. And then he became a Christian himself. In his ministry he moved around the land of Israel and eventually beyond. At one point they wanted to bring him back to Jerusalem because they wanted to kill him for his conversion to Christianity. Paul happened to be a Roman citizen which was very rare in those days for a Christian person. So when they went to seize him and take him back to Jerusalem, he called on the name of Caesar. As you read the story, you can hear a tremor going through the people as they hear this appeal to the name of Caesar. If a Roman citizen appealed to the name of Caesar, he would go to Rome and there would be no way he could be tried by a lower court. They reminded him of this and they said “if you appeal to Caesar, to Caesar you will go.” So Paul went not to Jerusalem but to Rome simply on the power of that name.

There are many ways in which names are powerful in our lives. Imagine if you wanted to pretend that you knew something and impress people, let’s say you wanted to pretend that you knew something about anthropology, and you were with other anthropologists, one of the ways they could test whether you really knew your subject would be to see if you knew the names of experts in that field. Now if you couldn’t mention a single name, it would be realized that you were a fake. And this is why in learned journals they often appeal to names. There is tremendous power in names.

Those of you who work with computers will know that computers always need names. If you want to file a document, the first thing the computer does is ask you for a name and if you don’t give it a name it won’t file it; it won’t even listen to you. Of if you want to retrieve a file, it asks what the name of the file is. If you don’t have a name, the file is lost to you. There is tremendous power in names because names make connections.

Think of the power of the name of God. Some people are more powerful than others and therefore their names are more powerful. But imagine calling on the name of God. Wouldn’t a person do that with some fear and trepidation and shouldn’t he or she be unwilling to do that lightly? In fact, not long after the giving of the Ten Commandments, the Israelitish people became so nervous about the name of God, that they stopped using it altogether. To this day Jewish people will not pronounce the sacred name. In the ancient Hebrew text it’s just indicated by four letters. This is what is called the tetagramton, the four letters. If a Jewish person is reading the scriptures and comes to these four letters, they will substitute another word rather than utter the name of the Lord. Why is that? Because of the fear that we are so prone to error, we are so fickle, we are so weak as human beings that if we use His name at all we will probably use it in vain.

Now we have the word “Jehovah” which is an attempt to express this ancient sacred name of the Lord. Of course the fact is that nobody really knows how that name was pronounced because it has been so many thousands of years since the Jews dared pronounce it. Is it Jehovah? Yahweh? I’ve been with Jewish people who have been reading the scriptures, they come to that word and they either say nothing or they substitute the word “the Lord”. In the New Testament you find the same thing: when asked what were the great commandments the first great commandment is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and instead of saying “love Jehovah,” or “Yahweh,” they said “the Lord.” That is a substitution. So in New Testament times they no longer spoke the ancient sacred name, it was considered too powerful, too precious and too likely to be misused. In a sense you could say that that ancient name has disappeared.

In the New Testament when the disciples went out ,they preached in the name of Jesus Christ and they knew that this had tremendous power. They would stand up in the temple and all they had to do was say the name Jesus Christ and you could feel a shock go through the crowd. They preached in His name. They healed in His name. They did good works in His name. They hoped in His name. They trusted in His name. They gloried in His name. They walked in His name. They believed in His name. They baptized in His name because that name had such tremendous power. But of course being so powerful there is always the danger that people will misuse the name; there is the danger that people will take the name in vain.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus referred indirectly to this second commandment and in a way suggested a different approach. “You have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not swear falsely (which means take the Lord’s name in vain). But shall perform your oaths to the Lord.” Since a false oath is an oath which is given in the Lord’s name but the person doesn’t follow through, Jesus went on to say: “I say to you do not swear at all. Neither by heaven for it is God’s throne, nor by the earth for it is His footstool, nor by Jerusalem for it is a city of the great king. Do not swear at all.”

Of course the practice of swearing has changed over time. We hardly ever hear people make a statement and solemnly and seriously swear it in the name of God or in the name of all that is holy. But that was done in the past. So often when people take to the oath or swearing, they are doing it to cover up their own weaknesses or sins. Remember in the Easter story Jesus warned Peter that He would deny him. And then Peter was standing there and a maid came up to him and said: “Surely you are one of the disciples.” And he said: “No I’m not.” And another person came up, asked him if he was a disciple and he said: “No I’m not.” And finally Peter began to curse and to swear. He swore by the name of the God that he was not a follower. Why did he have to swear? Because his position was so weak. You do not have to swear if you affirm the truth. If a person loves and respects the truth there is no need to take an oath. You just honor it because it is true; you believe it because it is true.

So what does this commandment mean in our lives? “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless or innocent who takes His name in vain.” Or as in another translation: “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by His name.”

On the positive side this is a commandment to honor and respect everything that comes from God. Everything that is sacred and true. And to be wary of our own tendency to avoid the truth, or to twist it, or distort it to our own advantages. It is a commandment to be wary of our own tendency to try to make ourselves strong by invoking the name of God usually in very inappropriate situations. We don’t need to swear. All we need to do is love and honor the truth. And especially to honor the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the name of God or the means whereby God has revealed Himself and made Himself known. Yes, we can use the names of the Lord freely and lovingly and we do so in worship and we can do so in conversations. We can do so in courts of law. But we must always to so with an understanding that we are dealing with something so precious that it is never to be taken lightly. Go through life with a sense of the sacred and what is holy. Be fearful of in any way interfering or causing shame on that name. Our life depends on this connection with something higher than ourselves and with all that is sacred and beautiful that comes from God.

Maybe this is why this commandment is so serious. It concerns our very spiritual life and safety. Blessed are those people who go through life honoring the Lord’s name, not just in words but also in the very way in which they live and breathe and deal with each other. Here then is the second commandment. It is also the second petition in the Lord’s Prayer as we pray: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” We are blessed when we retain a sense of what is sacred in life, unwilling to hurt or destroy those beautiful, priceless things that come from God.