Exodus 20:7

THE HOLY NAME

‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.’

Exodus 20:7

Though every feeling of reverence and gratitude bids us use the wondrous name of God with awe and recollection, we can offer no mere ceremonial homage to His name. It is Himself we reverence, it is Himself in His nature, His will, His character, for being what He is and what He has told us that He is.

I. Our reverence for Himself spreads over all that is connected with Him—over man made in His image whatever may be his outward conditions; over all that is affected by His name, all that is associated with His worship, the Bible, the Ministry, the Sacraments. Our reverence is shown, not by unwillingness to mention His name, but by that inward prostration of heart and soul and spirit before Him which affects and colours all our outward actions. All external reverence is the result of this inward awe. This is very much misunderstood, and it may be well to say a few words about it. We are often exhorted to reverence in these days as if it were an outward thing; there are certain outward acts said to be reverent, and we are told that to omit them is to be wanting in reverence. To make it quite clear, such outward acts as bowing to the Altar and making the sign of the Cross are said to be reverent. Certainly they are, if they mean anything at all. If making the sign of the Cross means that you are filled with a sense of the great love of our Master and only Saviour in dying for you, that you desire to keep it alive in that fashion, it may be a token of real reverence. But if it is made as a mere form, it becomes the most shallow and meaningless ceremony.

Certainly the body has its share in reverence; the twenty-four elders fall down and worship the Lamb. Certainly no one full of reverence could possibly sit on a chair and stare in front of him, while imploring God to have mercy on him. Kneeling in prayer, standing in praise, bowing the head at the name of Jesus, are outward tokens of reverence, but they are not reverence itself. Reverence is an inward thing; it comes from the sight of God, from the spiritual vision. ‘Woe is me!’ cries Isaiah, ‘for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.’

II. This Third Commandment is, when we consider it deeply, not only the safeguard of reverence; it is also the protection of truth and honesty. Falsehood arises really from indifference to the real nature of God. If God is a fetish, then you may lie. If He is a living Person, you cannot. To lie is to take God’s name in vain. We have almost forgotten that the Third Commandment gives the strongest support to truthfulness, that its meaning for us Christians is that in every word we speak, we speak in the name of God, as His representative, and in His Presence.

III. There is one other effect of entering into the spirit of this Commandment which must be dwelt on, because there are signs in our conversation and our literature of its necessity. We take God’s name in vain assuredly when we scoff at anything which either is good or tries to be; when we sit and criticise those who are labouring to make the world better, when we laugh at their failures and misrepresent their motives.

Let it be said once and for all that people who try to live Christian lives are sure to present some inconsistencies. They must be inconsistent—all of them for awhile—some of them always. They must be inconsistent because their standard is a very high one, and it is hard to attain to it in this world: only those who try to attain to it know how hard it is. The Christian position is so often misunderstood that it is always worth while restating it. The Christian does not profess to be better than other people; he acknowledges that he often breaks God’s Commandments, that he is a sinful man, that he needs redemption; he knows far better than his critic that he often fails, he weeps bitter tears about these very inconsistencies over which they are chuckling, he is conscious of his sinfulness and of his inability to cure it without help from above, he is clinging to Christ as his Saviour from those very inconsistencies at which the scoffer is jeering. Seen in this light, is not then the whole attitude of scoffing brutal and inhuman? It is like laughing at a wounded soldier on the battle-field; it is like jeering at a fever-stricken patient in a sick-room. If you are doing nothing yourself to hallow God’s name, to make His nature, His character and will known and loved by men, at least beware how you scoff at those who, with whatever inconsistencies and whatever infirmities, are trying to maintain His cause.

Illustration

‘Profanity is the most puzzling of all vices, for it looks so improbable that its effects should be so profound. No man realises beforehand what damage it will do him, nor afterwards what it has done him. This discovery is left for others. They know that he has been coarsened, vulgarised, and brutalised. I knew a man who wouldn’t believe how coarse and vulgar and brutal profanity was, until, one day (to teach him a lesson), his beautiful wife began to swear like a pirate. It gave him such a shock of horror that he never uttered another oath. The Devil has some sort of reward for every vice but swearing, and this dirty service he gets men to perform for nothing. It gratifies no passion, it promotes no interest, it gives no pleasure. On the other hand, it destroys reverence, offends all decent people, and insults God. An oath in the mouth is a worm in a flower, a serpent in a bird’s nest.’