[0:00] Exodus chapter 20 and verse 1 to 21. And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
[0:15] You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
[0:27] For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. But showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
[0:41] You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. For the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
[0:54] Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.
[1:10] For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
[1:20] Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
[1:34] You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. When the people saw this, when the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear.
[1:52] They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die. Moses said to the people, do not be afraid.
[2:05] God has come to test you so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning. The people remained at a distance while Moses approached the thickness where God was.
[2:16] This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study this. Father, this is your truth. This is your word.
[2:28] And we have the immense privilege of hearing your word when the pages of scripture are read. The words of the God who flung stars into space.
[2:41] The word of the God who created us. And the word of the God who has redeemed us in Jesus Christ. Help us to take on board what we hear in the word, what we learn.
[2:54] Let your spirit bear it deep in our hearts and let your spirit change us through what we encounter in scripture. Father, we want to see Christ. We want to see his glory.
[3:05] And we want to be changed by what we see. Help us now for Christ's sake. Amen. Amen. So we're plodding along in the Ten Commandments.
[3:17] Commandment number three this morning. Now growing up in the kind of household that I grew up in, where I was sent to a very good conservative Baptist Sunday school every single week, meant that I knew a few things about what a good little Christian boy should and shouldn't say.
[3:36] When you're in a kind of hyper-inquisitive age between the ages of about 12 and 18, sorry, 8 and 12 years old, you're constantly discovering new things, believing new things about the world that people are telling you, and then relaying, especially if you're like me, relaying these new things that you've discovered to everybody around you who wants to hear it or doesn't want to hear it.
[3:58] It's very unsolicited at that point. Now you're very gullible when you're that age and trusting of certain authority figures when people tell you stuff. Now to give you an example of this little boy who lived next door to me, my neighbor, he doggedly stuck to his conviction that his mom and his dad were both 21 years old.
[4:15] And I couldn't understand how come my parents kept getting older every single year, but his parents stayed 21 every single year. And so to try and convince me of his outlandish claims, he'd say to me, I swear on my life, man.
[4:30] I swear on my life. So in our interaction as little boys, there was a lot of swearing, that type of swearing. The bad swearing came later on. Now, you could swear on a bunch of different things.
[4:41] You could swear on your life. You could swear even on your mother's life. But if you went to Baptist Sunday school like I did, then the one thing you could never do was swear to God.
[4:52] Because that was to take the Lord's name in vain. That and saying the phrase, oh my God, as an expression of frustration or of shock or of exclamation. That speech was just completely off limits.
[5:04] Why? Because of the third commandment. And so today what we're going to do is we're going to look at the third commandment and we're going to see if my 10-year-old self was correctly applying it or not.
[5:17] Two simple points this morning. Well, it's a little bit of a cheat because the second point has three sub-points. But first point, let's try and understand this command itself. And then second point, I've got three T's for you.
[5:29] And I'll tell you what those T's are when we get there. So let's understand the command. Have a look down in your Bibles. Look at verse 7. Many of you probably be more familiar with the Old King James Version.
[5:49] It says, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. And so two things we've got to figure out if we want to understand this command. I think number one, we've got to figure out what does the Lord mean by his name?
[6:02] By his name? Number two, what does it mean to misuse or to take in vain his name? So let's think about names for a second. Names are pretty important.
[6:15] Admittedly, not quite as important in our modern culture as they were in certain older cultures and more traditional cultures. The other day, my son, whose name is Christian, he came to me and he said to me very sincerely, he said, Dad, did you name me because of what you do for work?
[6:33] So I laughed and I said, no, no, my boy, I named you because of Batman. Because everybody knows that Christian Bale was the best Batman. Now, that's the honest truth.
[6:47] There was nothing kind of aspirational in my naming of my son. I wasn't secretly kind of hoping that he's going to grow up and become all dark and moody and put on a mask and beat up people with clown faces.
[6:59] But in many, many, many different cultures around the world, names carry much more weight than that. Names signify belonging. They signify honor.
[7:10] They signify character. And when it comes to God, that is extremely apparent. So cast your minds to those of you who've kind of walked with us in this whole Exodus series from a long way back.
[7:20] If you can remember this far back, several months ago, when we were in Exodus chapter 3 and Moses encountered God at the burning bush. God commissions Moses to go and to tell the Israelites that he's going to set them free.
[7:34] And Moses is trying to figure out how on earth he's going to get the people to listen to him. How is he going to persuade the people to follow him? Here's Exodus chapter 3 verse 13 and 14. Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.
[7:50] And they ask me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites.
[8:01] I am has sent me to you. It's interesting that Moses seems to intuit that in order for the people to be persuaded, they're going to want to know the name of God.
[8:14] And why are they going to want to know the name of God? Well, because the name speaks to his core essence. It speaks to his core identity. It speaks to his character, his core character. And it speaks to what is driving this God and his intentions and what he's going to do.
[8:25] God is, I am who I am. That is, he is the uncreated one. Not contingent. We say this in our confession when we say it some mornings.
[8:39] Not contingent on anyone or anything. He just is and always will be. He's complete and self-sufficient within himself. And that's all in his name.
[8:51] His name is the signifier of who he truly is. So names are important. But then secondly, what does it mean to misuse his name then?
[9:05] Or to take it in vain? Now the original word there literally translates something like emptiness or nothingness or worthlessness. It's actually the same word that we get the word idol from.
[9:16] So a very literal rendering of the command would approximate to don't render God's name worthless. In other words, don't strip it down from what it really is.
[9:28] Don't empty it of its fullness. Don't take anything away from it. To present God's name as anything other than it actually is, is to take the Lord's name in vain.
[9:39] And so then remember, because the Lord's name is almost indistinguishable from who he actually is, to take the Lord's name in vain is to present God in any way other than he truly is.
[9:55] And so when testifying then about God in your speech or in your behavior, subtracting anything from him that he said about himself, or adding anything to him that he hasn't said about himself, is a violation of the third commandment.
[10:07] Which means this is not a trivial matter. Maybe you thought it, like the third command's a little bit trivial. You know the first two, worship God alone, don't make false worship, and then it's like, well, don't say, oh my God.
[10:20] That doesn't seem to fit in terms of the force. But when you see it this way, you say, well, no, actually, this is not a trivial command at all. That's why in Leviticus chapter 24 verse 16, we're told anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death.
[10:37] Blasphemy is saying to God, you are not the great I am. That's what blasphemy is. And we shouldn't think of that as just kind of a personal insult to God, like you've hurt God's feelings when you say something like that.
[10:51] Blasphemy is not just a matter of insulting God. Like we actually saw last week, it's a matter of denying ultimate truth altogether. See, because if God is I am who I am, the uncreated one, the source of all existence, then any denial of him in your speech or in your action really is to plunge yourself into a delusional world.
[11:13] Blasphemy is, in effect, a declaration that you live in la-la land and that you've taken leave of your senses. That's what it is. So to sum this up then, this little section, the command is prohibiting the presentation of God in any way that doesn't accord to who he truly is.
[11:33] That's what the command is. Now how would we apply that for ourselves then today? Let's focus in on speech for what we're going to do. Our speech about God and our speech about God's activity in this world and in our lives.
[11:49] Just a side note, by focusing on speech, I don't want you to think that the command has nothing to do with behavior. It certainly does have something to do with behavior. In fact, you see this in some of the Old Testament laws in books like Leviticus.
[12:02] So Leviticus 18, there's a law that forbids child sacrifice that was common amongst the Canaanites at the time. They did child sacrifice in service of the Canaanite god, Moloch. And verse 21 of chapter 18 reads, Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Moloch, for you must not profane the name of your God, I am the Lord.
[12:25] So child sacrifice there, in that context, is considered profaning God's name, breaking the third commandment. And why is that? Well, because it misrepresents God's character to the nations.
[12:39] God is not like Moloch, who requires child sacrifice for appeasement. And so to practice child sacrifice in that community, then, is to blur the distinction between God and Moloch, and to take the Lord's name in vain, to profane His name.
[12:57] So the third commandment definitely applies to behavior, as well as speech. But for the rest of the sermon, I want us to focus a little bit on speech, and thinking about speech. How what we say represents the name of God.
[13:12] So here are the three T's. If we are to keep the commandment, then I think we need speech that takes three T's into account. Truthfulness, triviality, and timidity.
[13:25] Truthfulness, triviality, and timidity. I basically got these ideas from the great reformer and theologian, John Calvin, and his little exposition on the Ten Commandments, but he wasn't quite smart enough to come up with the alliteration that I did.
[13:40] Truthfulness, here's the first one. Our speech about God, and our speech about God's activity in this world, and in our lives, must be truthful.
[13:53] Now that obviously means straight away that we need to know God in Scripture, right? In the Bible. He has disclosed Himself to us, and we're not at liberty to then kind of speculate about things that He hasn't disclosed to us.
[14:12] I cannot tell you the amount, how much pastoral damage I have seen through pastors, church leaders, small group leaders, just well-meaning Christians, going off script when trying to counsel other Christians.
[14:30] So the Bible is crystal clear that we should be encouraging one another in the faith, right? That's part of why we do community. But that needs to be based on the word of truth. It needs to be based on Scripture. Ephesians 4, Paul actually tells us, he says, we speak the truth in love to one another, and sometimes we try and say loving things to each other without the truth part, and we end up really, really, really damaging each other.
[14:55] So when, just for example, when you, full, full, full of sincerity and good intention, tell a person who contracts cancer at the age of 30 that there's probably some unconfessed sin in their lives, and that's why God has allowed this disease, when you do that, you violate the third command.
[15:11] And yes, that is a real encounter that I've come across. A real person that I know. When you, in a very genuine, well-meaning attempt to try and show love to somebody, tell that single person who desperately wants to be married that the reason that God hasn't provided them with the spouse is because he's got some sort of special task lined up for them, you break the third commandment when you do that.
[15:34] Friends, we cannot, cannot presume to speak about God or for God in ways that go beyond the Bible. We hurt people when we do that. We create false theologies about providence.
[15:48] We create false theologies about suffering. We create false expectations for the future. And most of all, according to this passage, we profane the name of God. We create a false God to be believed in for people.
[16:03] This problem is actually particularly exacerbated when it comes to the whole issue of providence. And interpreting God's providences in this world. And what I mean when I say providence is the Bible is clear teaching that God orders all of human existence down to the smallest, smallest details according to his good and perfect purposes.
[16:24] Nothing that happens in this world is outside of God's providential care. That says that in our confession. It says in most kind of classic Protestant confessions. Matthew chapter 10 verse 29, Jesus says these things.
[16:36] Jesus tells us, not a sparrow will fall to the ground outside of the Father's care. Now it's one thing to acknowledge that doctrine, that truth, God's providential care. In fact, it's a massive comfort for believers to know that everything is under his providential care.
[16:52] But it is another thing then to try and match up every single circumstance in your life or bigger things that are going on in the world, big world events with the mind and the will of God. In the larger catechism, which is a question and answer format document that's supposed to teach the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith, question 113 is this.
[17:14] What are the sins forbidden in the third commandment? And there's quite a long detailed answer into what sort of sins are forbidden in the third commandment. But part of the answer is actually this.
[17:24] So you see what the catechism is saying.
[17:38] It's saying you violate the third commandment when you make idle speculations about exactly how God is connected to events in your life and in the world at large.
[17:50] That's what it's saying. So when that televangelist gets up and he says that the reason there was an earthquake in Haiti was because of all the voodoo that's practiced in Haiti, he is violating the third commandment.
[18:06] But it's not only creepy tele-evangelists with bad hair who make these sorts of pronouncements. We often do it in much more seemingly innocuous ways. I've got a new job.
[18:19] The Lord is clearly opening up a new door for me. I really feel at peace about this situation. It must be the Lord telling me this is the right thing to do.
[18:32] We say those sorts of things often, don't we? Now I'm not saying that we can't sometimes look back on our events in our lives and see something of the Lord's fingerprints. I'm not saying we mustn't thank God constantly for His providences, although I think we've got to thank Him for the good and the bad providences, according to the Bible, things that happen in our lives.
[18:53] I'm not saying we shouldn't even be open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day as we do different things, but friends, we need to be oh so, so, so, so, very careful when we attach the name of the Lord to events around us or experiences or feelings that we're having.
[19:09] So very careful. Lest we communicate things about God that He has not communicated about Himself. and really, really damage people by creating false expectations. Let me bring this home here, kind of a personal testimony.
[19:28] Over the last year, we've been involved in a merger process, which came together in May. Now leading up to that merger process, standing up front here, speaking to the respective congregations, our leaders standing up here, speaking, I endeavored really, really hard to be particularly guarded in the kind of speech that I used as we were getting closer and closer to the merger process.
[19:52] So to say things like, it really seems like the Lord might be doing something here by bringing these two congregations together. I could have got up here and it probably would have been a bit more rah-rah and got you going quicker and easier if I just said, the Lord is saying we've got to do this, guys.
[20:10] The Lord has opened up this opportunity, let's do it. But that would have been to violate the third commandment. That would have been to speak beyond what the Lord wants.
[20:22] We cannot presume to speak on His behalf when He hasn't clearly disclosed that to us yet. Our speech about God, our speech about God's activity in this world and in our lives must be truthful.
[20:34] That's the first T. Here's the second T, triviality. Our speech about God and our speech about God's activity in the world and in our lives must not be trivial. I think this one applies most to how I understood this command as a 10-year-old kid.
[20:51] So in his work, The Institutes, John Calvin writes this. He says, the name of God is vulgarized and vilified when used in oaths, which though true are superfluous.
[21:03] Vulgarized and vilified. See, he did know how to alliterate. Now, why would that be the case? Remember that the command is literally to not render God's name empty or hollow.
[21:18] That's because God's name has infinite substance in it. God's name represents all of who he is. His holiness, his perfection in the name. You don't take something that is that precious then and use it for the mundane.
[21:34] Right? That just makes sense. I mean, if the queen comes to Cape Town and asks you to take her out for dinner, as good as the food tastes, you don't take her to Eastern Food Bazaar. You take her to La Colombe and Chef's Warehouse and you ask her to pick up the bill as well.
[21:51] It is totally, totally inappropriate and offensive to use God's name in frivolous ways that render his name empty or less than it's worth. And so I don't think that flippantly swearing in God's name is appropriate for Christians.
[22:07] I don't think using the phrase oh my God as an exclamation is appropriate for Christians. But more than that, positively, I think we should be very, very concerned to demonstrate reverence and seriousness when we talk about God.
[22:26] Right? We can be incredibly casual in our God talk. And understandably, we do this, and I know this because I have the same impulse and I have the same background to many of you, but we do this in reaction to unhelpfully kind of dour and legalistic religious environments we might have grown up and experienced in the past, but we must be very, very careful not to correct one error with another error.
[22:52] When people hear us talk about God, they shouldn't come away thinking that we are miserable, pedantic, joyless, legalists, but they should also come away with a sense that God is deeply revered in our hearts.
[23:08] It's one of the reasons why I've grown in my appreciation for more, what do I call traditional liturgy in our worship services, so the prayers and the confessions. It's why I love the language in the older hymns.
[23:21] It's not because older is always better. It's not, and many things do need to be updated. But in those older prayers, in those older confessions, in those older hymns, there is this beautiful reverence that holds up the transcendence of God, shows us God for who He truly is, says God is more than your personal therapist.
[23:47] He's the creator. He's the uncreated one. He's transcendent. In this very brutal life that you and I live in, we, yes, definitely, we need a God who draws near to us.
[24:02] We need a God who's intimate. We need a God who's down in the trenches with us, who's right there, but we also, also, also, also desperately need a God who's transcendent, who's above and beyond the problems, who's above and beyond the brokenness, who's above and beyond our failure, who's above and beyond our sin.
[24:19] We need that God. I say this in all seriousness. There's a reason why the Marvel Cinematic Universe just can keep on spinning out movie after movie after movie and series after series and we just keep watching it.
[24:32] The appeal that they are tapping into, at least in part, is that inward desire in each of us for a being that can transcend the limitations inside of us, limitations outside of us that crush us down and break us down.
[24:48] We have a God who transcends the chaos, who transcends the despair of this world, who is holy, holy, holy, who is perfect.
[25:01] Let's make sure we speak about Him that way. And then there's the third T, timidity. Our speech about God, our speech about God's activity in this world in our lives must not be conducted with a spirit of timidity.
[25:21] There's actually quite a little bit of a debate about the word take in the original command there. Don't take the Lord's name in vain or in the NIV, it's don't misuse the Lord's name. It's a Hebrew word, it can actually mean a number of different things.
[25:35] It can mean take, it can mean carry, it can mean bear. Recently, Professor Carmen Imes, who teaches Old Testament at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, she wrote a little book called Bearing God's Name, where she makes the argument that bear is actually the best translation of the word.
[25:52] So something like don't bear God's name in vain. And she points out that that concept of bearing a name is actually quite prevalent in the book of Exodus. And it certainly is one of the ways in which the nation of Israel were taught to conceive of themselves.
[26:10] They were to bear God's name to the nations. In fact, they were to do that because Adam and Eve, the original image bearers, failed to bear God's name to the nations when they sinned in the garden.
[26:25] And so through coming along and covenanting with Israel, God begins fixing that problem of the garden by saying, hey Israel, you come along now and you bear my name to the nations.
[26:36] And so what the third commandment is doing, the third commandment is binding Israel to that mission, saying stay on track, obey this properly, bear my name properly to the nations. Do it the right way.
[26:48] That's a command for us then, to bear God's name to the nations, to show the world in our speech and in our conduct who God really is. Now in history, we've not always done that well.
[27:03] Christians have misrepresented God in speech and in behavior. In fact, in recent history, this has very much come into the spotlight, particularly within the broader branch of churches that we belong to, which is the evangelical church, evangelical Christianity.
[27:22] We have Christian leaders and churches in the name of God rightly calling for adherence to sexual ethics that we find in the Bible while at the same time participating in or covering up sexual abuse within their own denominations.
[27:43] So in 2019, the Houston Chronicle did an expose on widespread abuse and cover-up within the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest evangelical denomination in the world.
[27:54] that convention has been reeling from those revelations for the past three years. We have Christian leaders and churches in the name of God rightly preaching community, like we talked about earlier, transformation, well-being, getting accountability, sharing life with each other, while at the same time creating abusive environments full of pastoral bullying and manipulation.
[28:22] think of the now infamous podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I know many of you have listened to it. The podcast sat at number one on iTunes for most of last year in the category of religion, and at one point it actually rose to number three on iTunes across all categories.
[28:45] So it's not just Christians listening to that podcast. If you don't know what it is, it's a podcast series that chronicled the spiritual, emotional, psychological abuse carried out by Mark Driscoll, senior pastor of the Seattle megachurch Mars Hill during the last two decades.
[29:03] And that series struck very close to home for some of us. Very, very, very close to home for some of us because Driscoll's influence extended to the ministries and the churches some of us were involved in 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 13 years ago.
[29:15] some of us sitting here right now were on the wrong end of Driscollian abuse within the broader network of his churches. We have Christian leaders and churches in the name of God rightly calling out corrupt and unjust governments while at the same time baptizing certain political parties and ideologies and engaging in blasphemous forms of Christian nationalism.
[29:43] During the thick of Donald Trump's presidency, Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of one of the largest and most influential churches in America, First Baptist Church of Dallas, had his church choir premiere a new worship song in the middle of their worship service.
[30:04] These were the lyrics, Make America great again, make America great again, lift the torch of freedom all across the land, step into the future, joining hand in hand, make America great again, make America great again, and surprisingly the song was entitled, Make America Great Again.
[30:21] The political slogan that was at the center of the Trump campaign. Now Jeffress actually went so far to have the song copyrighted with CCLI. CCLI is the Christian copywriting licensing organization that makes sure that worship artists get royalties for their songs that get sung around the world.
[30:40] He copyrighted it with CCLI as a worship song. Friends, at one level, I don't care what you think about Donald Trump politically, I do care what you think about him morally, but singing his slogan as a worship song in a worship service is blasphemy.
[31:00] Christian nationalism is a damnable heresy. I could go on with recent examples of Christians failing to rightly bear the name of God.
[31:14] But I cite these very public examples because I think what they've done in many of us is made many of us, and I feel this only impulse inside of me, this inclination in myself, they made many of us ashamed to bear the name.
[31:30] They made us timid. They've hamstrung our courage to bear the name of God well, to stand up well for biblical truth in a public way, to contend for biblical ethics, to truly own our Christian brothers and sisters, our church family, warts and all.
[31:50] people, they've made us fearful of letting our friends and peers know that we go to church and that we take the Bible seriously and that we believe God's way is good for human flourishing.
[32:03] I feel that. I feel that every single time a non-Christian person asks me what I do for a living, I have that same impulse inside of me. I'm not immune to this timidity, brought in part by the failings of Christians to rightly bear the name of God.
[32:25] And friends, certainly I know, I'm not a fool, I know that progressive secular culture has misrepresented Christians and Christianity time and time again, but we've also given them plenty of ammunition. And so we find ourselves in this position full of timidity, full of shame in the face of the watching culture.
[32:45] Ironically, some of us don't end up violating the third command because we don't ever speak about God at all, outside of the safe spaces of maybe a church service.
[32:55] Even there, we're a little bit awkward of saying something to Christian because you don't want to be perceived as being one of those Jesus guys. But friends, that shame, that timidity, although it might spring from some legitimate concerns, it is itself a profaning of the name of the Lord.
[33:17] We are not fulfilling our mandate to bear God's name to the nations when we are ashamed of that very name, ashamed to be associated with it. When we let Christian bad behavior silence us, shame us into silence, we have failed to grasp the very essence of the Christian faith in the first place.
[33:35] We have failed to understand that at the very heart of the faith is the gospel of the one who allows his beautiful, beautiful name to be completely trashed by sinful human beings so that our undeserving names might be written in heaven forever.
[33:53] When we open our mouths and confess his name, we are saved, the Bible says. Listen to Romans 10. This is Paul. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
[34:10] For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame, for there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.
[34:24] The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. In that most contemptible display of human sinfulness, Christ's crucifixion, and remember, he was put to death in the name of God.
[34:44] There was religious leaders purporting to do the work of God in that moment when they called for his execution. In that most shameful display of sin, Christ bore our shame.
[34:58] He bore our shame. He bore your shame. He bore my shame. As Philip Bliss, the hymn writer, wrote, man of sorrows, what a name for the Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim.
[35:15] Hallelujah, what a Savior. Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah, what a Savior.
[35:29] Anybody who calls on the name of the Lord will not be put to shame. Friends, we have no reason to carry shame anymore. No reason. We must, must call out sinful action committed in the name of God when we see it.
[35:46] We mustn't hide it. We mustn't pretend that somehow we're protecting our organizations when we don't call out sin committed in the name of God. We must call out violations of the third commandment that we see.
[36:00] but we no longer have a reason to transgress that same commandment by being ashamed to speak of our commitment to our Lord because he's taken our shame away.
[36:13] We don't have it. There is no shame in our God. There is no shame in our great salvation. Let us not then be ashamed or timid when we speak of God and we speak of his great salvation.
[36:26] Let's pray together. Father and our King we want the speech on our lips to display your glory.
[36:46] We want to bear your name well with reverence with awe with thankfulness for what you have done for us in Jesus Christ.
[37:00] We don't want to be ashamed of your name. We want to have a quiet confidence and conviction in your goodness even when we as Christians do terrible things in your name.
[37:20] Lord help us help us to have speech that is befitting of you on our tongues. I know there are all sorts of pressures on us to speak in different ways and to not speak at all about you. Help us to overcome those pressures when we know what a glorious thing it is to speak of you as you really are.
[37:40] Our Savior and our Lord the one who removes our shame completely. Father I pray for any person here this morning who has never come to Christ and had their shame removed. The shame associated with their sin the guilt with a life lived apart from them I pray that you would bring them to faith this morning and they would come and find Christ who takes away shame.
[38:04] Help us Lord to be a church that keeps the third commandment and speaks bears your name well to this world. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.
[38:14] Amen. We're going to and we're we're going to we're going to prepare to