Keep it Holy

Bearing His Image

We talked last week about the purpose of God’s law, and specifically the Ten Commandments.

-God has just rescued His people from slavery, from oppression. Now He desires to give them His good law, the law that reflects God’s character. They aren’t just arbitrary rules and regulations that are meant to burden us, but rather they are for our good.

I said this last week, but I want to repeat it because this is showing us the big picture of what is happening in these commands.

-God is calling them, and us, to faithfulness to Him because He has shown His faithfulness to us.

The view that the Israelites would have had of God was purely transactional in nature. That if you give to the God’s, if you give them what they asked for, that you will be blessed. This seems easier, it seems like all you need to do is give enough that you get what you want in return. But what happens when you aren’t met with success? What happens when you go through financial struggle? Through sickness? Through depression? Well then you find yourself trying to give so that you can receive a blessing. This is why many people give to televangelists and to prosperity Gospel preachers even when they are in debt and even when they are struggling. This is the danger of hoping that if you are just obedient enough or if you give enough that you will be blessed.

But God’s commands are a way of showing the freedom that is in Him, and for us in Christ. Not as a way of earning our own salvation but rather as a way of responding to His grace and to His redemption of His people“

What God calls us to is faithfulness, to obedience because He first loved us. He calls us to recognize that even at our worst He came down and redeemed us from our spiritual slavery. God’s law is full of His love, it is full of His kindness. The law is by the grace of God to bring us into His presence and to reflect His image. To restoration in our relationship to Him and to show love to others as He has to us.

I was reading an article in Forbes called “14 things successful people do on weekends” and in this article there were some very interesting points. The writer of this article talked with the Spencer Rascoff, who cofounded Hotwire.com, served as a VP for Expedia, and CEO of Zillow. He said that his weekends are important to “unplug from the day-to-day” and “get a chance to think more deeply about my company and my industry…even when I’m technically not working, I’m always processing in the background and thinking about the company.” The article talked about making time for family, for exercise, for hobbies, and for vacation. It also talked about disconnecting from things like your phone. Now this is interesting, they said “I advocate taking a ‘tech Sabbath’…taking Saturday night to mid-day Sunday off is a nice, ecumenical time that works for many people.” It talked about volunteering as a way of branding yourself and networking with others, using it to plan for the next week and to recharge so that you were ready for the week.

But with all the people that they talked to there was a similar theme for those in business. The weekend is for reflecting, for recharging, and for preparing yourself to do your job more effectively for the rest of the week. It is to look at the bigger picture. The essential point being made here is that your business is the priority, it is the idol for which you situate your life around and prepare yourself for. To give yourself enough time to prepare yourself to do your job well.

Now in interesting ways we see that the way that the world views rest is very similar to the way God desires for His people to rest. The way that it prepares you to glorify Him throughout the week and to be His image-bearer, His representative. We are all going to center our world around something, something that will tell others about how we identify ourselves and what is important to us. Timothy Keller in his book “Every Good Endeavor” calls them “Gospels”. The Gospel of business, the Gospel of education, the Gospel of arts, the Gospel of science, even the Gospel of sports, or of music, or of family”. What we are going to see in the two commands we will talk about today is first what it means to be a representative of God and how God calls us to prepare our hearts and minds to preach His Gospel, and not the worlds Gospel’s.

So why is our title today “Keep it holy”?

We discussed last week that to be holy was to be “set apart”. That means that we live differently, that we reflect God’s image in a way that is evident to the world around us. That was the purpose of God’s law, was to reveal how His people were different.

The two commands we are going to discuss today are God showing His people how they are to be set apart. We see in verse 8 that God calls them to “remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.” But I think this idea of the Sabbath being kept holy also extends to how we are to keep ourselves holy. How God has set us apart for Him and to be a light to the nations.

Whose name do we carry?

The first command that we are going to discuss is “Do not misuse the name of the Lord your god”.

The word for name is also used to describe a person’s reputation or their glory. Now we often think of this command as meaning we must not use God’s name as a swear word or to not take an oath by God’s name. Certainly both of these are part of this command. In fact Jesus states this same thing in 5:33-37. But it means more than this.

-The main aspect of this command is in connection to how we reflect God’s name.

-The word we often translate as “take” or “misuse” is better understood as “lift up” or “take up”. So this command is understood as “do not lift up” the Lord’s name for “no good purpose” or “profane”.

-This is important because names for gods were not just names, they indicated the essence of that god. It indicated who they were and why they were to be worshipped. As we have discussed when God tells Moses “I am”, He is stating that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that He is the creator God, and that whatever you think about your gods that I supersede their authority. "Yahweh's name signified his essence...names connoted the very value, character, and influence of a person or thing."

Yahweh’s name signified His essence. To treat bearing it lightly is to undermine His authority and His presence in our lives.

As I read one one commentary, to “bear” or “lift up” His name in vain was "To treat Yahweh's name with disrespect is to treat his gift lightly, to undermine his power, to scorn his Presence, and to misrepresent to the family of humankind his very nature as "the One Who Always Is." - Durham

But what does it mean to “lift up” or “carry” God’s name? We get a picture of this later in Exodus, in chapter 28.

Exodus 28:12 LEB

And you will set the two stones on the ephod’s shoulder pieces as stones of remembrance for the Israelites, and Aaron will bear their names before Yahweh on his two shoulder pieces for remembrance.

Exodus 28:38 LEB

And it will be on the forehead of Aaron, and Aaron will bear the guilt of the holy objects that the Israelites will consecrate for all their holy gifts, and it will be on his forehead continually for acceptance for them before Yahweh.

Aaron “bore” the name of the people before God

-He represented the people before God, it is the same word that we see here. It is actually pronounced “Nasa” and means to “lift up” or “carry”. Aaron served as their representative before God. As he represented them he would go before the Lord and “bear the guilt” of Israel’s sins so that he could offer them as it says in v. 38. This was so that they may find “acceptance” before the Lord.

-So now here, what God is calling Israel to is be His representatives and as we do that we must not carry His name in vain. We must not represent it that causes God to be viewed as less than what He is.

-In Ezekiel 36:19-38 we get a picture of what this looks like.

Ezekiel 36:19–21 LEB

And I scattered them among the nations, and I dispersed them in the countries according to their way, and according to their deeds I judged them. And they came into the nations to which they went, and they profaned my holy name when they said to them, ‘These are the people of Yahweh, and from his land they went out.’ And I was concerned for my holy name, which, the house of Israel defiled among the nations to which they went.

-Here Israel had been scattered because of their sin before God. And as they go into exile the nations mock the Israelites and thus God’s name was less than what it should be.

-Thus God says that He will act on behalf of His holy name. Because not only had they “profaned” His name, but they have caused the nations to profane it as well.

-Notice the similarities in Exodus 20:7 and the punishment God gave and to the punishment in Ezekiel.

-But God says that He will place His spirit on His people so that they may follow His “statues and carefully observe my ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.

-God is seeking to protect His own name against blasphemy. Both from His people and from the nations, but in doing so He desired to bring His people back into faithfulness. How does He do that? He reminds them of His promises, of His desire for His people to be in His presence.

-It becomes clear again what the purpose of the commands are again. For His people to be in His presence. It is a re-creation account.

-God is now calling us to be His representatives

-How to we represent God? More than just bearing His image, how do we represent Him?

-God is telling His people that they are to live set apart, that they are to reflect His character. They are to be a light to the nations for the Gospel, for them to return to His presence, to the Garden, to the promised land.

-God’s name is not just about His physical name, but about what His name means, about how other people view the name of God. Do the people of the world bless or curse the name of God? Because you will often see that when Israel is in sin often the people that God has brought His people to be in captivity for will end up recognizing the greatness of Yahweh. It happens when Abraham was in Egypt, it happened when Joseph was able to interpret dreams, it will happen when God gives his people victory over other nations, it will happen when Shadrack, Meschack, and Abednego show Nebuchadnezzar the Lord’s power.

-Aaron was a “representative” for the people. In the same way we are to be “representatives” for God. We are to bear His name, but we must not bear His name in vain. We must not act in a way that against what He has called us to.

It is always funny for me to see the bumper stickers that people put on their cars. They can be making a statement, they can be funny, they can be representing a political affiliation, or they can be purely reflecting the things that we enjoy and that we are identified by.

-I don’t really put bumper stickers on my care, if for no other reason than this. I know that whatever bumper sticker I put on my car, how I drive will now reflect the image of how people view that specific thing. By that I mean, if I were to put a Bible verse, to put the name of the church that I am a pastor at, if there is a cross on my car. Now people will know what I represent and they will judge my driving accordingly. Now, part of this has nothing to do with my ability to drive, I think I am a pretty good driver. My wife might think a little differently…but either way. We know that we are prone to getting frustrated when we drive. Even when people do perfectly reasonable things like merging when a lane is closing, or driving the exact speed limit. We can be frustrated! So in a sense, I know that part of this reflection seems out of my control.

-But even when people are going to create their own opinions we are called to represent God in everything that we do.

-In our men’s group we have on Tuesday nights we were talking about how believers have a reputation in restaurants of not tipping the way that they should. Sunday’s

But this also is represented in our words. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 5:33. He says we should not take an oath even by our own head, but our word should be enough for people to know we are trustworthy, we should not need to make a promise. Why? Because we have been deemed a trustworthy person, a person who reflects God’s character. His faithfulness, His truth, His kindness and compassion. So don’t swear an oath, because the only person who can keep any oath is the Lord because He owns all things. Therefore, be trustworthy people, bear the Lord’s name.

How we act will bear His name either in vain or to His glory.

There are many spaces of which we live in our world in which we will be seen as representatives.

-The way that we use social media will see us as a representative. Do we tear others down? Do we speak in hateful ways towards those with different opinions on our own or even think of them as “stupid” or “mind-controlled?” Even worse, do we use the Lord as a guise for our personal and political opinions? Do we care more about our opinions than the people that we are actually talking about?

-Do we interpret the Bible in a way that fits our personal beliefs? Whether our reasoning for justifying why people deserve what they get or why we aren’t showing compassion.

-Do you have signs in your house that say something to the affect of “God, family, and fun” or something to that affect? Well then, does what happens under the roof of your house portray that God is truly the priority?

-As Jesus talked about, are we people who keep our word to others? Are we seen as trustworthy people, whose word is just as good as a signed agreement? Whose yes means yes and whose no means no? Or are we being deceptive in nature? and in so doing so making God seem deceptive?

-In the past God’s name has been profaned by our own country. When it comes to how we have treated women and not believing when they tell stories of the harassment and mistreatment they have gone through, only to be called derogatory terms by others for coming forward or being told, “why take this to court when we should deal with this in the church”?

-Or the way that the Bible has been used to justify racism, many have used verses that discuss slaves be obedient to their masters to encourage the violence and the abuse of slaves. Still today there are churches who use the Bible to justify racism, calling themselves “God’s chosen people” or “God’s chosen race”.

-We should not think that we are any less able to commit the same sins of previous generations.

We are called then, in this command to be set apart with the way that we use our tongues and with our actions, to be His representatives. But the fourth command is how we get our hearts in the right place to live this way.

Matthew 5:33 LEB

“Again you have heard that it was said to the people of old, ‘Do not swear falsely, but fulfill your oaths to the Lord.’

James 5:12 LEB

Now above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no, no, in order that you may not fall under judgment.

"Jesus reinforced and clarified this commandment with regard to making false promises that invoked God's name...thus virtually eliminating any kind of oathtaking and requiring one's word to be one's bond in any promise.

Whose presence do we enjoy?

As God is calling His people to faithfulness, to carry His name well He gives them instructions on how to prepare for this with the Sabbath. Now the Sabbath goes back to creation, as we have seen God do time and time again. God rested on the 7th day, and here He is calling on His people to be a “new creation community” where they will become new.

-He is calling them to remember His covenant as well, as He gives them His law He is doing it as an act of faithfulness to His covenant and as a reminder for how they can be faithful to it, to keep it holy”. In the same way God gave Noah a rainbow as a reminder of His faithfulness, and to Abraham He gave circumcision. Here He gives His holy law. He gives it as a reminder, because we are so forgetful. As we have seen, Israel is forgetful as well.

-God tells the purpose of this day, which is to keep it as a holy day, a day that belongs to God alone. It is meant to be habit forming, to focus His people towards Himself. It is used as a tool for remembrance so that they may act in faithfulness towards Him throughout their journey. One way I heard it said was that “Biblical remembrance requires action.”

-God is seeking for them to see that there is no sacred and secular, they can’t separate spheres of life. He is telling them that everything they do is in connection to their relationship to Him.

-It is not about just stopping activity in and of itself but rather it is meant for our spiritual growth, to focus on God’s holiness and His blessing in our life.

-The Sabbath gets back to what the third command is telling us. That if we rest we are going to far better reflect him in our daily lives. In the ways that we act. Because we have reminded ourselves of ways we have sins, ways that we can grow. We have brought ourselves into community where others keep us accountable to our actions, we invest ourselves in His Word and remind ourselves of the great truths that are present. We remind ourselves of His glory and from that we seek to praise Him in our work, and in our conversations, and with our time.

The Sabbath isn’t God just giving us a cheat day, it is to prepare our hearts and minds to glorify Him. It is for us to worship God, to prepare our hearts in our time in His Word and in prayer, and to strengthen His Spirit within us.

-Because on the Sabbath they could still feed and milk their animals, and the priests still worked in the santuary.

-Jesus even tells us that it was not just about stopping us from work. It was never meant for us to do nothing, and that was clear from the beginning.

-Jesus shows this truth several times. When His disciples are picking wheat from a field He reminds the pharisees that David himself broke the Sabbath for bread. When He heals a woman and the pharisees come after Him again He reminds them that even they untied their animals on the Sabbath.

-Paul makes it more clear in Romans.

Romans 14:5 LEB

One person prefers one day over another day, and another person regards every day alike. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind.

-What is Paul talking about? Well see, the Sabbath is on Saturday, the 7th day, not Sunday. So why do we have church on Sunday? Well early Christians took their rest on Sunday because that is the day of the resurrection, so it was a celebration of Jesus coming back and for His eventual return.

-So Paul is getting to this controversy, is one day better than the other? No! In fact, he says, some treat every day like a Sabbath. Is one better than another? No. What is important is that we give ourselves the rest we need to glorify God.

-And remember what we talked about last we. It is about the nature of the law, not the letter of the law. But under the nature of the law we are called to greater obedience, not less. So we are called to rest, it doesn’t matter what day, and it may look different for each one of us. But our desire should be to keep our rest holy, to rest in His presence and to remind ourselves how we are to live for His glory.

What often happens though is we use freedom to bring us to leniency.

Usually our “Sabbath” is spent resting in that which is other than God. We rest in our hobby, in our family, in a book, or even in our work. We find our rest often times in technology.

-A study found that the average amount of time one person will watch TV in their lifetime is 78,705 hours. Which is 1,248 a year, and more than 3 hours a day. In a lifetime that averages to about 1.3 years of just watching tv.

-The average adult will also spend 3 hours and 43 minutes on their phone each day. And these numbers are separate from each other. They will watch more than 3 hours of television and another nearly 4 hours on their phone.

-The average adult with check their phone 58 times a day.

-A study done by Lifeway found that 20% of Christians have read through the entire Bible, 35% have not read the Bible on their own. 42% don’t read the Bible more because they don’t prioritize it or don’t have time.

-49% of Christians said they read their Bible more than once a week, and 58% of Christians say if they go several days without read the Bible they miss their time with God.

-Now I’m sure you are wondering, “how long would it take for me to read the Bible cover to cover? The answer is 70 hours and 40 minutes. That means if we spend as much time reading the Bible as we did watching TV we could read through the Bible 17 times in a year.

Or we get tied up in being busy with our day to day lives. Going from one place to the other, never resting and always going on to the next thing. So we try and “make time” for God, when in reality we have plenty of time if we are willing to make Him a priority.

-We often make ourselves exhausted by our work and we need to take these long breaks to recuperate. We can be so exhausted by our week that we feel too tired to go to church.

-But every piece of evidence that we have points to sleep and rest as giving us the best opportunity to do good work. We never come up with our best ideas when we are busy, we come up with our best ideas when we are able to sit down and think.

-When I was in college and seminary there were plenty of papers that I decided to procrastinate and get done at the last minute. Sometimes I would be up till 3 or 4 am writing a paper.

-Then what would always happen is I would go to sleep and wake up the next morning and look at what I had written. And what I was writing made no sense at all, or I would be repeating myself. It was terrible writing. I would have to go back and redo everything that I had put down.

-It would have been better for me to sleep and wake up the next morning rather than to stay up all night.

The Sabbath is not meant as a burden but as a delight.

It is for our spiritual growth. It is meant to refresh us, it is not about activity in and of itself.

Why do you take your wife on vacation? Why do you spend intentional time with her?

It is a way of showing your commitment, it is a way of showing that you enjoy your relationship and that you want to spend time with her. Do you know what you aren’t going to do on your vacation? Spend the entire time on your phone, get out your laptop and do work, or sit all day and watch Netflix and barely pay attention to her. Now notice the last one, that is inaction, but it is the wrong type of inaction. What is important is our focus. One person who is sitting all day may need to be active on their day of rest. Because we work in order to have that vacation, we will go months and months just waiting for the week that we will be on a beach, or in the mountains, or in Europe somewhere. We work for the joy to come.

We take joy in glorifying God in our day of rest.

Ezekiel 36:24–30 LEB

“ ‘And I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all of the lands, and I will bring you to your land. And I will sprinkle on you pure water, and you will be clean from all of your uncleanness, and I will cleanse you from all of your idols. And I will give a new heart to you, and a new spirit I will give into your inner parts, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give to you a heart of flesh. And I will give my spirit into your inner parts, and I will make it so that you will go in my rules, and my regulations you will remember, and you will do them. And you will dwell in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you will be to me as a people, and I will be to you as God. And I will save you from all of your uncleanness, and I will call to the grain, and I will cause it to increase, and I will not bring famine upon you. And I will cause the fruit of the tree and the crop of the field to increase, so that you will not suffer again the disgrace of famine among the nations.

-The purpose of work was always to give us a glimpse of God’s glory.

There is a story that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote called “Leaf by Niggle”. It is a story that he wrote in a period where he had difficulty finishing the Lord of the Rings series. The story is about a painter. A painter who had this idea in his mind about this beautiful tree that he wanted to paint. In his imagination he knew the scenery, the background, the details of ever piece of bark and every limb and leaf. But he starting on a single leaf. As he started drawing this leaf he would get distracted by others. By his neighbors, by his family, and by his church. He found himself helpings other so often that when he died he had only finished this one leaf. This leaf was caught by some peoples eye as a “beautiful leaf”. He was distraught that he had finished only this one leaf. But as he takes this train ride, that is a picture of him going to eternity, he gets to the heavenly country, and as he enters heaven he see’s the tree that he had been working on and the exact leaf that he had made so beautifully. See our work should reveal a small piece of creation, and give people a vision for the better life that is to come in Christ. Our work should be pointed towards giving people that picture. Even if we finish only one leaf because the rest of our lives is spent on caring for others. Because our work will never be complete, we will never get the full picture. Because even if we finish the tree there is still the entirety of the forest. So why burden ourselves when we can just rest in God?

-We work now knowing that we are building up an eternal reward. Not because we make a lot of money, not because we are more successful than another person, and not because our work is more important than another persons. We work to bring God glory. Therefore our day of rest is enjoying a small glimpse of the glory that is to come.

How are you reflecting God’s glory in your life? Are there ways that you have taken God’s name in vain in your work? In your social life? In your attitude towards others?

Have you allowed yourself to rest in God’s glory? To see what He has created you for?