I got a very good friend. One of my best friends named Les Newsome. He lives in, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and he's got just the best stories. All of his stories are the best. Everyone I mean, they're all about music, because he went to a lot of concerts, the poor guy kept getting converted over and over again throughout his life, and every time he got kind of recon... You know what I mean? There's people who get baptized 4 or 5. He was one of those guys. And every time he would get reconverted, he would get... He would start to repent for loving secular music. He actually thrown ACDCs back in black out of his car in cassette or CD form three different times. He would go buy it, then he'd repent, and go buy it, and then repent. And so when he was in one of his Christian music only phases, he went to a concert. It was DeGarmoan Key for those children of the 80s. And he knew the church well where they were performing, and he got to stay in the sound booth, and speak to some of the roadies, the band, and he was just really feeling awesome, like feeling in the inner circle, because he got to do that. And the next day, he went to a record store, a secular record store. But he was just kind of thumbing through it, he loved music so much. And he overhears this pretty impassioned discussion between the record store owner and someone he never met. And as he comes to purchase his records, the discussion is about whether or not Christian music would sell in this record store, and the record store owner looks at less and says, this guy is saying that we shouldn't separate Christian music off of itself, we should just put it in all music, kind of pop music, rock music. Do you think a band like DeGarmoan Key would sell well in this record store? And my friend, feeling so confident, says, well, you know, I'm actually personal. I'm a friend with Dana Key, and I know for certain, it would sell. And this other gentleman who had been silent up until that point said, well, thank you for saying that. I'm Dana Key, unless he's terribly embarrassed. And he's going to be really embarrassed to know that I use that story. So today, what we're talking about is this third commandment, do not take the name of the Lord, the God in vain. And typically, honestly, most of us have used that commandment to say, you shall not curse. Got it. And what I want you to see today is that that commandment is actually much broader, much more difficult, much more all consuming than that. What I'm telling us is, don't claim a relationship with him if you don't have it. Don't put his name over your life, your actions, your words. Don't take his name if you don't know him. Because he's, you know, miserly and cheap and the kind of guy who would convict you for using his music without permission, but because the only the real God can heal you, only the real God can forgive you, only the real God can love the real you. I don't settle for a relationship that's not there. Please stand as we read first from Deuteronomy chapter 5 and then from Matthew chapter 7, what I believe is Jesus is commentary on this particular commandment. Hear the word of the Lord. So I keep smiling. It's so happy to have y'all here. I mean, it just, wow. I knew I missed you. I didn't know this was bad. All right, hear the word of the Lord. You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain, but the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And then hear the words of Jesus from Matthew 7, but where false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous walls, you will recognize them by their fruits, our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a disease tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus you will recognize them by their fruit. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who isn't heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart for me. You walk workers of lawlessness. As far as the reading of God's word all men are like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's word. God's word stands forever. You may be seated. We take God's name in vain when we claim our relationship with him that we don't have. Only the real God can heal you, only the real God can forgive you. Only the real God can love the real you. The first thing I want to see is what does it mean to take the Lord's name in vain? Let's just kind of go through it, peel it back like an onion. First of all, you know, like I said, most of us learn from the beginning, right? This means don't go around saying God's name, don't curse. And you know, almost as if you could just keep this commandment by not speaking. It's more than that, but it's not less. That makes sense. I mean you guys start somewhere. So it's more than just your words, but it's certainly not less. I grew up listening to Steve Martin stand up comedy. If I wanted to be bad, I would sneak upstairs and get my brother's records and listen to Steve Martin. And he had a joke about dying and going to heaven. He's like, oh, wow. I mean, heaven. There's gates. Wow, there really are gates. He says, oh, look, there's an angel. I'm sure he'll let me in. Let me in, angel. No, I wasn't that bad. I use the Lord's name in vain. That's all that part of it. It was funny when he did it. It's more than that, but it's not less. Why is it not less than that? Well, it's not less than that because you wouldn't use someone's name like an oath if you knew them and loved them. If God were real to you, if Jesus were real to you, if He were dear to you, you wouldn't just go around throwing this name around. You know, we all had a lesson learned, didn't we, about talking about people's moms? We all learned this lesson. You can probably many of you remember the embarrassing day when you learned a lesson that even if you have a friend who constantly complains about his mother, if every single time you were together, all he wants to do is talk about how crazy his mother is, that very first time you said, you're crazy old mother, he got mad and probably hit you. You don't get to talk about her because you don't know her. You don't want your Lord talked about like that. If it's important to you. That was the way that you try to keep this law and get around it was they just wouldn't say God's name. We don't even know how to pronounce God's name in the Old Testament. His covenant name for years, we pronounce it Jehovah. Now we think it's Yahweh. We don't really know. They refuse to say it for centuries. They would say Adonai whenever they would see the four letters of God's name. They took all the vowels out so we wouldn't know how to pronounce it. And they would say another name altogether Adonai just so they wouldn't mistakenly accidentally say it wrong. That's going too far. I think that's a little bit wood that's very wooden, but at least they understand if a person is important to you, you'll show respect to the name. That's the first way we break it, but it goes more than that. We break it whenever we use God's name without his permission. Whenever we use his name for things that he didn't encourage us to use it for, anytime we use the badge of being a Christian for something or say God wants us to do this or that. And I told y'all many times when I grew up my mom for her summer job was to manage the city swimming pool in small towns throughout the south. You just have one big swimming pool and you pay the dollar to get in every day and you could go there and that's where I got skin cancer. And my mom managed it. And so I had the keys, I had the keys to the biggest swimming pool in town. And when I got old enough to drive my friends always wanted me to use those keys and I did. And you know, well started out with just kind of a couple of us ended up coming 15, 20 of us and we would bring refreshments and we would play and we would do all kinds of, and bring music and make noise, not knowing that noise carries. And one time the police came up there, I remember well, the police coming and I went to talk to him, I knew the policeman, his name was Basil, hey Basil, I should have called him off their chapel but I didn't get that memo. And he said, what are you doing up here? And I said, well you know me, Basil, my mom sent me up here and he looked at the friends, he couldn't see them all because some of the girls were hiding. And he looked at the drinks and he looked back at me and said, I know Bonnie, she didn't send you up here for this. And we all sneak back home. You know, I've had people tell me, I've actually had people tell me, I didn't believe this but I was in a conversation not two years ago with someone telling me about mysterious revelations coming from the Lord and hearing things and meeting people. And actually being told by God that he should leave his wife and children and in the middle of the conversation, I said, I don't have to stop you there. He didn't. I know he didn't. When we use God's name without permission, we are taking his name in vain. But it goes even deeper than that. Like I said, it goes to every single time we claim a relationship that we don't have when we pretend to be something we're not. Back in the 40s and 50s, one of the biggest Hollywood stars there was was named Roy Rogers, you know Roy Rogers, right? His wife Dale Evans and they were everybody's sweetheart. Did you know that that was a total made up character? That wasn't even his name. His name was Franklin Sly. I keep auditioned for the part of Roy Rogers and then you choose that name all the time. He wasn't. Dale was his third wife. They did eventually get married but it was all fake. 100% of it. There's a lot of the passes for Christianity that's fake and it's it's tempting. It's tempting to claim Christianity for status. It's tempting to claim Christianity because you're a cultural conservative like the Pharisees were and you want to keep the people in power who are currently empowered. That it's always been a problem. Christianity just kind of becomes as it stays in a culture for generations. It becomes just a tradition that's handed down and a lot of people, a lot of people in the United States of America are Christians for the same reason a lot of people in Oklahoma are sooner fans. You just grew up here. You grew up somewhere else. You would have supported another team but since you grew up here, you know for certain the Oklahoma sooners are the most important thing in the world. The best team that has ever graced the field of football. If you grew up in Tennessee, believe it or not, you would actually think Tennessee was better. You would. And a lot of Christians, a lot of our churches are filled with people who are Christians because grandpa and grandma are Christians and mom and dad were Christians and we grew up coming to church and that's where sooners were Christians. That's our mascot. Jesus. And as a culture embodies that, it becomes a very dangerous powerful tool. I encourage some of y'all to read John Perkins book when just let justice roll down the story of his life and he and his continual efforts to preach the gospel and elevate the community of African Americans he grew up in in Mendenhall, Mississippi. He says not long after kind of establishing his ministry, he grew up, his brother was murdered, he just terrible racist actions and he got out of the state, went to college, did well and got converted and the Lord called him back to Mississippi to do this ministry and he realized not long after getting back that he needed to make friends with the white church. If it was everyone I really get any momentum, he needed friends in the white church and so he went into first Baptist Mendenhall and began to speak to the pastor there named Dr. Odinwald. Dr. Odinwald is very suspicious of this troublemaker and they talked and the more they talked, you could see Dr. Odinwald's face change and he actually started crying. He was so happy to find out that this man was preaching the same gospel about the same Jesus that he believed in and he prayed with John and he embraced John and his final words told him that many were just keep preaching John, preach John, preach. And his ministry started to change and he started to preach about love and loving your neighbor and and actually living out the gospel that Jesus had taught and he was in no way ready for the pushback and it became so severe. The Dr. Odinwald committed suicide and at his funeral, John was the only African American who went to the funeral and the church secretary came up to him and he said you know he was Dr. Odinwald was so sad this final month, he kept preaching about love but he did it with sadness. When your culture takes on the name of Christ, there's no intention to take on the truth of Christ, the person of Christ, no intention of taking on the repentance, the life of Christ. That's what the entirety basically, that's what the entirety of the minor prophets, if you start reading at the book of Hosea and read through to the end of Malachi, that's kind of what they're all saying. God says to you, your sacrifices mean nothing, I don't accept your sacrifices, you bow your head like a reed, come back in four up and down, your love for me is like the dew of the morning that evaporates by noon. Yeah, despise and attest your sacrifices, I despise our mercy, not sacrifice, you draw near to me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. That's what he is decrying, he is decrying using God's name in vain. And the final level of how we use God's name as vain is when we are in Christ who actually do have a relationship, still tend to use him to get something else. We use God to get something else, we use his name, there's a great hilarious example in the book of Acts of some men trying to cast out demons and they say in the name of Jesus who Paul preaches. We command you to come out and the demons speak through this boy to these men and say, Paul, I know, and Jesus I know, but who are you claiming Jesus's name using it? James says you have not because you asked not or you have not because you asked for your own pleasures. What are they saying? He's saying you're using God, you're using Jesus to get to something else, you don't realize that he is the valuable thing. I did marriage counseling for a couple several years ago and as she was kind of listing things that he had done to hurt her, he began to talk about going to these conventions, these conferences they would have every year. And how every year before the conference, he would come home with a real skimpy bikini for her to wear at the swimming pool at the hotel so he could show her off in front of her friends and his friends. And he didn't realize he couldn't figure out what's wrong with that. And she said to him, here's her eyes, I'm the valuable one. Don't use me to get their approval. It's my approval you should be concerned about. And Jesus, I believe is saying to the church, don't use me to get the family that you think will make you fulfilled. Don't use me to get the job you want, don't use me to get the health you want and the valuable thing here. And every one of us is guilty of that, probably every day. That's what it means to use God, to use God's name in vain, to take his name for your own purposes. And God, he adds in this commandment kind of a, I don't know, sounds like a threat. He says, do you 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. What does that mean? I think he says that for three reasons. One of which is it's a comfort to those who are being oppressed. There are people here who are oppressing you, but they're claiming the name of Christ. And I just want you to know, to the oppressed ones, their sacrifices mean nothing. Don't worry. I told you one of the, one of the big first real assassinations of the civil rights movement was Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, was shot by man named Byron De La Becquith. Byron De La Becquith was tried three times and it was a mistrial, all three times. And the reason what for the mistrial was there were two witnesses who claimed that he couldn't possibly have shot Medgar Evers because they saw him at church. The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. It's also important because God is protecting the mission of his church. God is passionate about the mission of his church. And he doesn't want people misusing his name in a way that causes the church, the gospel to be defamed or defiled. He won't allow that. Most dramatic story like that in the Bibles when David commits adultery with Bathsheba and then has her husband killed and brings her into the royal castle so that kind of, you know, kind of keep it secret that she's pregnant with David's childhood. Everybody knew. The prayer prophet Nathan came to him and convicted David of a sin. And he says, God's going to hear your prayer and he's going to forgive you. But you're still going to undergo judgment because your sin has given an occasion for the Gentiles to blaspheme my name. The world needs to know that you will not get away with sin because your sin has given occasion for the Gentiles to blaspheme my name. Thirdly, the reason I believe this thread is so significant, the Lord will not hold him guiltless who holds his name in vain is because if you're settling for a relationship that's not real, if you're claiming the name of someone you don't actually know, you can't get the actual forgiveness. Only the real God can really forgive. Only the real God can really love you. A doll can't love you back. An idol can't love you back. They can't forgive you. So God in this thread is drawing us to himself and the question then becomes, how do we love God with sincerity? Now I don't want you going down a whirlpool some of you I can write to. I see your faces. Well, at least yours. Some of you are getting sucked down a whirlpool of sincerity. Do I love God with sincerity? Am I sincere enough? You don't know. The answer is no. You're not. But that's okay. What I want to encourage you to do is not take on the negative. You can't live a life of the negative, right? I'm never going to commit taking the name of the Lord in vain again. Don't live your life trying to not do that. Just live your life taking his name with sincerity, taking it with truth. What does that mean, Rick, sincerity? What does that mean? I mean, I have to scrunch my face up like this. No, you know what the worst sincere comes from? In the biblical times, if you or anybody goes to anybody in a Greek world, you know, at some point or another you have a beautiful garden and you don't want to have a statue in the midst of your garden and you have a party and an unveiling of the statue. A marble statue in the middle of your garden of Athena or Zeus or one of them things. And Venus, that's the one I was thinking about. Evidently making marble statues is hard, you know. And they would always have flaws in them. And so what the sculptors would do is they would cram wax into the fall. So the statue when they were first unveiled would look perfect. And everybody would go on. And then as the party would go on, the sun would shine down on the statue and the wax would melt and the flaws would be revealed. And the word sincere means literally in the Greek without wax. Come to Jesus with your flaws. Come to him with your flaws clearly out in the open. Don't beat yourself up for being so anxious and convince yourself that God never wants an anxious follower. Come to him with your anxiety. Don't beat yourself up for using his name selfishly and convince yourself that he's going to reject you because you've been selfish. Come to him with your selfish motives. This is the sermon, the prayer I pray every Sunday morning. Lord I want to preach the best sermon ever because I want to be thought well of. But also because I want people to love you both. So just take all that garbage motive and throw it in the trash can and do what you will. Just come to him and say, God, I love you for selfish reasons and for unselfish reasons, I love it. I want you with your blessings. He never casts that out. Come to him with your doubts. I love that song we sang at the beginning here. He'll us a manual and it talks about the father coming with his doubts and saying, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. No, my faith isn't perfect. It's not the strength of your faith that saves you is Jesus that saves you. And thank God he saves people with weak faith. Come to him with your anger. He knows that you're mad. He knows that your mad life hasn't come on the way you thought it would. Don't wait until you're not angry anymore to come back to the Lord but come to him with your anger and confess that and let him deal with it. Come to him with your faults. It's only when we show him the real us that he will show him us the real him. It's only when we show him our faults that we get to see his heart. And that's when he forgives the real us. Please pray with me. Father heaven, we pray that you would receive us. We come to you with our warts and our flaws. We don't believe in you like we should. We don't love you like we should. Our love for you is not as pure as it ought to be. It's certainly not disinterested. We're anxious. We're angry. We'll see you with all those warts. We know that you will. Who is a God like you who forgives iniquity and sin? Because you delight to show mercy. Father we are asking you to do what you like to do. Would you show mercy on us now? We pray in Jesus' precious name. Amen.