THE TEN COMMANDMENTS – “SOAP IN YOUR MOUTH”

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (#3)

Scripture: Exodus 20:7; Matthew 12:22-37

INTRODUCTION

The season is Lent, the journey toward Easter has begun, and we are listening to and learning from The Ten Commandments as we discern and discover God’s direction for our lives. Those commandments were familiar to Jesus and His first disciples as they made their way toward Jerusalem, and so it can be for all of us. We need to know not only what these ancient laws say, but also to trust and to obey them as we seek to follow in the footsteps of our Savior.

A man Mark Twain once knew, who had a reputation for being ruthless in business and unkind to his family and friends, nevertheless told the famous author that he was going to take a trip to the Holy Land, climb Mount Sinai and read The Ten Commandments out loud at the top. “I have a better idea,” said Twain. “You can stay home in Boston and learn to keep them.”

Exactly so. We need to read and to know what The Ten Commandments tell us to do and not to do. But when all is said and done, what God wants and expects is for us to keep them. Otherwise, they would have been called “The Ten Suggestions.”

This past week, on Ash Wednesday, we talked together about the first two commandments, given by God to Moses and the Hebrew people in the 14^th century B.C., words which still speak to us today: You shall have no other gods before me…and you shall not make any graven images, nor bow down before them or serve them (Exodus 20:3-4).

This morning, we focus our attention on the third commandment, which declares You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (Exodus 20:7). And that, my friends, is a theological mouthful!

So let’s begin with the personal implications of this commandment. Many of us who watched the Super Bowl a month ago enjoyed the TV commercials almost as much as the game. Do you remember one of those advertisements for Chevy trucks? It pictured a number of children, one by one, with soap in their mouths, and at the end of the 30-second spot, we found out why. It was what they said as they looked with wide-eyed wonder at all of the awesome things a new Chevy truck can do. I won’t go into details, and I’m sure that some folks found the commercial offensive…or should we say “distasteful”?

What Barbara and I remembered was when it happened to us – the bars of soap that our parents put into our mouths for things we said many years ago which have long since been forgotten (she remembered brown soap, mine was white Ivory). Perhaps you had the same experience and of course, what our mothers and fathers were trying to teach us was that certain words and phrases were absolutely unacceptable, especially when it came to the name of God.

Why? Because the third commandment says You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. That’s what most of us think this commandment is all about, and surely, we need to control our tongues and not flout or disgrace the name of the Almighty Creator of the universe with crass and careless words that are profane and perverse.

II.

But there’s more to it than that, which takes us deeper now into the public domain, where people in the church take the Lord’s name in vain.

Our gospel lesson from the 12^th chapter of Matthew reminds us that when Jesus healed a man who was blind and possessed by demons, the religious leaders claimed that the healing happened in the name of the devil (verse 24).

Jesus looked them right in the eye and confronted those leaders with these words, saying He who is not with me is against me…If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then His kingdom has come among you…But watch out…because whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit and commits blasphemy will not be forgiven… (Matthew 12:30-32, paraphrase).

William Barclay, the Scottish Bible commentator, helps us understand what is happening here. Religious people, defending their turf, have lost touch with the real truth: “(Those religious leaders, over and against Jesus) had insisted on their own way so long that they…could not recognize God’s truth and goodness when they saw it. They looked upon incarnate goodness and called it evil; they looked at the Son of God and called Him the ally of the devil. Therefore, the sin against the Holy Spirit is the sin of so often and so consistently refusing God’s will, that in the end, it cannot be recognized when it comes even full-displayed…and when we reach that stage, repentance is impossible.” (The Daily Study Bible by William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, page 49).

Why? Barclay explains: “When we do not recognize the evil as being evil, we cannot be sorry for it…and wish to depart from it…and without repentance, forgiveness cannot and will not happen.” (Ibid, page 49).

Sad to say, that reality is happening in the church today, where people are so certain of their theological and biblical positions that they demonize others and point their fingers, like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, and say “They are not real Christians,” and that’s deadly.

Last summer when they went into that big courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama, and removed the two and a half ton monument of The Ten Commandments, a huge crowd gathered there. Among them were many church-going people who are against Judge Moore, the Ten Commandments judge. They hate him – even though they are Christians, they hate him. They want him thrown in jail or worse.

There’s another group of people we saw in that crowd who stand with the judge and they hate the other protestors. One of them said, “We’re here because we believe our God has been insulted.” (From “The Christian Century,” an article entitled “Courts Order Judge’s Monument Moved,” page 13, September 6, 2003) And another one shouted when they came to take the monument away, “Get your hands off our God.” (From “Christianity Today,” an article entitled “God Reigns – Even in Alabama,” page 35, October 2003)

Well, something is wrong in that scene. Jesus said, A house divided against itself cannot stand, and we need to watch out for this in the church, my friends. Jesus warned us that accusatory attitudes, self-righteous indignation toward other believers in the body of Christ is serious business. We have to watch out lest we sin against God’s Spirit, which is love and grace, and cut ourselves off from His reconciliation and forgiving embrace.

III.

The third commandment says You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. That applies to our personal lives and to the public domain in the church. But there is one more dimension to this ancient commandment which leads us into the political sphere, heightened by the presidential election that will happen in November of this year.

Howard Dean, now out of the race, made the mistake of saying that the Book of Job was in the New Testament. He didn’t take the name of God in vain, but obviously, he will not be our next president.

However, last week a televangelist, who does claim to speak in the name of God, declared that “George W. Bush would be elected in a landslide” (Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network).

Over the past 14 years of preaching from this pulpit, I have been careful about politics, leaning neither toward the Republicans or the Democrats. But when another pastor or fellow Christian speaks out and proclaims that a particular candidate has been divinely chosen, then I think that he or she has crossed the line and taken God’s name in vain.

That’s what Stephen Carter was trying to tell us in the book he wrote four years ago: “God’s Name In Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics.” In summary, this professor at the Yale Law School and one of the leading religious prophets in our nation, has said that “there is probably no country in the western world where people use God’s name quite as much, or as publicly, or for as many purposes, as we Americans do – the third commandment notwithstanding…But when God-talk mixes with the partisan side of politics…the name of God will collapse into a mere rhetorical device. Instead of maintaining the sacred character guaranteed by the third commandment, God’s name becomes a tool, a trope, a ticket to get us where we want to go.” (From “God’s Name In Vain,” by Stephen L. Carter, Basic Books, 2000, pages 12, 16, 17).

Well, I don’t believe that is where most Americans want to go. I believe that the vast majority of our citizens – Republican and Democrat; white, Hispanic and black; young and old; rich and poor, gay and straight; conservative, moderate and liberals – most of us want to be, as we always have been, “One Nation Under God” with liberty and justice for all…a country that is grateful to have the words “In God We Trust” printed on our currency…a republic that recognizes and respects different faith traditions and seeks to be and to become “The Beloved Community” which Martin Luther King, Jr. once envisioned.

CONCLUSION

And so it is, in our personal lives, in the public domain of the church and in the political arena of our nation, the third commandment applies: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Living, as we are today, in an era of strife and division amongst people of so many races, nations and religions, let us remember and never forget that God Almighty, who came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, wants us to live together in peace and in unity.

It was Abraham Lincoln who recognized and agonized over the adversarial positions of the north and the south in the War Between the States, both claiming that God was on their side, and then said: “I am not at all concerned about which side the Lord has chosen, for we know that He is always on the side of right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should choose always to be on the Lord’s side.”

May it ever be so, in this congregation and the Presbyterian Denomination, in our city and our nation: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And as we come to this table today, let us rejoice and give thanks, for here we know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that all of God’s children are welcome.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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