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Thou Shalt Not Take My Name in Vain:
Thou Shalt Not Take My Name in Vain:
Over arching question of what is done in Jesus name.
Jesus is essentially expounding on the 10 Commandments here.
The next few weeks will be Jesus application of the law.
This week will be from the first table of the law, next week will be from the second table.
First table has to do with the relationship between man and God, and the second table has to do with man and neighbor.
All under the banner of I AM YHWH.
So this week is considering the question of what is done in God’s name.
And the rewards and consequences associated with it.
Last week Jesus introduced the topic by saying,
“Whoever welcomes a child “in my name” welcomes me.
We talked some about what it means to welcome a child in God’s name or not, but now it would be important for us to reflect more on what it means to take God’s name because this is the continuing conversation here as John asks:
Mark 9:38
LEB
38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone expelling demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us.”
So what is taking the Lord’s name in vain?
It’s about allegiance.
Christianity is all about allegiance to Christ.
We lose sight of this because we live in a culture that elevates autonomy and personal responsibility to an unhelpful place.
Think about every Disney movie you ever saw that taught you that you can be who you want to be and you can chase your dreams.
Something admirable about the American spirit,
but it can lead us to false views of how the world works.
Namely, that you are not your own.
You belong to someone else.
You serve someone else.
You are not ultimate.
There are powers that are more powerful than you.
Chiefly, God and Satan.
So Christianity is a matter of whom do you belong to?
Who’s kingdom do you reside in?
When God gives the 10 Commandments, He is warning them,
“Don’t say I belong to YHWH all willy nilly”
It’s serious business to belong to God.
It’s even more serious to represent Him to others.
That’s why Fathers, Kings, and Pastors will have a stricter judgement. Because they were authorities that either represent or misrepresent God.
Now this doesn’t exclude how we use God’s name of course,
But to reduce it to how and when we are saying the word “God” or “Jesus Christ” is entirely too narrow.
People who have experienced the magnitude of Christ’s mercy don’t tend to use His name carelessly because He is truly their savior.
But if this is a question of allegiance and subsequent action, then this passage is a warning from Jesus as to the severe consequences of taking His name in vain.
But before we get to the warnings, we get a surprising encouragement.
John reports that there are people who are doing things in Jesus name and succeeding who aren’t following them.
Clearly a misunderstanding of what it means to bear the name of Jesus.
What is Jesus announcing?
A gospel of the kingdom which dispels the demonic!
And there are people who are doing things in Jesus’ name who aren’t followers yet...
Which brings us to our first point:
There are those outside the church who are doing good in God’s name:
There are those outside the church who are doing good in God’s name:
Best example of this would be the good Samaritan.
39 “Don’t stop him,” said Jesus, “because there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name who can soon afterward speak evil of Me. 40 For whoever is not against us is for us. 41 And whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of My name, since you belong to the Messiah —I assure you: He will never lose his reward.
“The unbaptized who perform acts of kindness to those who are not yet incorporated into the body of Christ may be more profitable servants than are those in the church who draw others into evil deeds.” - Synthesized Augustine
“Such persons assuredly are more profitable servants even before they become a part of the body of Christ, than those who, while already bearing the Christian name and partaking in the sacraments, recommend courses of action which are only fitted to drag others along with them into eternal punishment” - Augustine
There are those inside the church who are doing evil in God’s name:
There are those inside the church who are doing evil in God’s name:
I don’t have to look far to highlight this.
“Widespread sexual abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches were reported by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News on February 10, 2019. The report found roughly 380 clergy, lay leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, leaving behind over 700 victims[1] since 1998.”
“More than 450 Catholic clergy in Illinois sexually abused nearly 2,000 children since 1950, the state’s attorney general found in an investigation released Tuesday, revealing that the problem was far worse than the church had let on.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul said at a news conference that investigators found that 451 Catholic clergy abused 1,997 children in Illinois between 1950 and 2019, though he acknowledged that the statute of limitations has expired in many cases and that those abusers “will never see justice in a legal sense.”
In response to all this,
picture Jesus here.
He’s still got Peter’s child on his lap.
42 “But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me —it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
And then He lays out a series of warnings, repeating 3 times this phrase
43 And if your hand causes your downfall, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell—the unquenchable fire, 44 [where Their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.]
45 And if your foot causes your downfall, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell— [the unquenchable fire, 46 where Their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.]
47 And if your eye causes your downfall, gouge it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where Their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.
Hell is real:
Hell is real:
No second chances
No annihilation
31 Now when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them from one another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. 34 Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world! 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me as a guest, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you as a guest, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ 40 And the king will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, in as much as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will also say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed ones, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! 42 For I was hungry and you did not give me anything to eat, I was thirsty and you did not give me anything to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not care for me.’ 44 Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not serve you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly I say to you, in as much as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Where does the idea of hell come from?
Gehenna - Valley of Hinnom - Topheth
Burning worm infested trash.
God has prepared two places.
One is His kingdom.
One is the trash place where the demonic is literally purged out of His kingdom.
It wasn’t made for humans.
Human beings were made to live in God’s kingdom.
But people who reject God’s law, either the law revealed to them in the Mosaic law, fulfilled in Christ, or the law of God revealed in nature,
then they are not fit for the kingdom.
Hell isn’t the same for all of the wicked.
It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgement than for you.
Those who have received God’s special revelation who turn away from him anyway have a greater degree of punishment.
And we can get all wrapped up in questions of fairness, but this is a question of justice.
On the last day, there will be no one, not even those in hell who will be able to say that God was unjust.
So what do we do?
You will go to Hell if you take Jesus’ name in vain.
Here’s Jesus’ remedy:
Weeding.
That’s how I like to see it.
If there’s weeds in the garden of your life, pull them out.
Because if you don’t and all that’s found on the last day is weeds because your garden is overrun...
Jesus has parable after parable about this concept of how do we spend our time while we wait for Jesus to return.
Are we lazy, letting the salvation he accomplished for us go to waste?
Or are we diligent?
Here’s why Jesus says everyone will be salted with fire...
6 You rejoice in this, though now for a short time you have had to struggle in various trials 7 so that the genuineness of your faith —more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire —may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
12 If anyone builds on that foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, 13 each one’s work will become obvious, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. 14 If anyone’s work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, it will be lost, but he will be saved; yet it will be like an escape through fire.
God is a consuming fire, being exposed to Him in the judgement will either reveal treasure that comes from being in Christ,
or it will reveal nothing but wickedness and the fire won’t stop.
And so Jesus doesn’t just leave us there in the lurch,
He offers us help.
Application both personal and corporate.
Personal Application:
Jesus isn’t saying to start lopping off parts of our body.
He’s telling us to take away the means.
But He uses a drastic example to show us how seriously we should be taking sin.
Because the result of unrepentant sin in the lives of people is hell.
The Puritan John Owen had a famous quote
“Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”
We are not a neutral party observing a fight here.
We are part of the fight,
and if you sit there with your hands down while boxing, your opponent will clean your clock.
In this case, your opponent is your own sin.
How to deal with sin?
Repent.
Which involves taking action!
If you’re fostering a pornography habit, the way you escape isn’t by making God more promises and wishing yourself out of an addiction,
you take action to cut it out of your life!
If you’re struggling with alcoholism that is eating away at your life,
then change habits that lead to sin.
That’s what Jesus is saying here.
If something is causing sin, get rid of it.
When we do that we often lose something that used to be available to us in freedom.
If you are bound up in pornography, you probably don’t have the luxury of just using technology however you want anymore.
But it would better for you to lose that freedom and that luxury than to go to hell over sin that you refused to bring to the foot of the cross.
So that’s the personal application,
Church discipline application:
We teach people to take sin seriously personally but we don’t take it seriously in the church.
Which is devastating because God has actually given the church the tools and the keys to guide people into the kingdom of heaven, but also to warn them if they are on their way out.
Last week we talked about formative discipline,
this week we’ll talk about corrective dicipline.
This analogy of the body is perfect.
Because the church is the body of Christ.
Mat 18 steps
1st Corinthians story
2 And you are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation.
“Put away the evil person from among yourselves.”
Why?
5 turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.
Why?
To save them!
If what Jesus has revealed to us about Hell is true,
then we should be clamoring to protect each other.
24 The one who will not use the rod hates his son, but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently.
That’s in the context of the home.
Who’s job is it to discipline in the church?
The members of the church.
And it’s a process.
But this is a big part of what it means to be a Christian.
If you’re a Christian you’re a royal priest.
Which means you engage in the work of weeding in the kingdom.
Not outside.
Paul makes it clear, God judges those outside the church, either with the state or on the final day of judgement,
but we judge those in the church.
For their benefit.
This is why Jesus ends this teaching this way:
50 Salt is good, but if the salt should lose its flavor, how can you make it salty? Have salt among yourselves and be at peace with one another.”
Christians have the salt.
Being in covenant with God brings flavor to life, because we are living the way God intended us to live.
We are living fully human.
So having salt among ourselves and being at peace with one another is a reminder to be building each other up and protecting.
Passing of the peace as part of the funnel.
