January 2010 Pastor's Highlander Column

January 2010
Pastor’s Column

Brothers and sisters,

We have just celebrated “The Event” of Cosmic History — the incarnation of God in human flesh and His birth as an infant in Bethlehem two millennia ago — and with that in mind, this is the perfect opportunity to consider how we address and speak about our Emmanuel [God with us] as we also begin our study of the Third Commandment.

The Third Commandment warns us that, “You shall 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.” (Exodus 20:7)

During the holiday run-up this year, while we should have been busy renewing our devotion to the Prince of Peace, advertisers’ commercials and circulars seemed to celebrate more than ever the basest desires to serve oneself before serving others. So far as contemporary Western culture is concerned, life really is “all about “ME”. Added to such trends this year was the 24/7 rendition of Tiger Woods’ indiscretions that seemed to be heralded by every conceivable form of media.

Even a quick survey of magazine titles seems to confirm the symptoms and the diagnosis of self-absorbed idolatry and vanity. Consider the following: a quick glance at modern American magazine titles of the last 75 years reveals the depth and breadth of our self-absorption and descent into the banal.

• Time. Life. (OK, we're doing all right so far. These make sense. Break down the study of the whole of creation into categories.)

• People. Us. (Now this is where we begin to get really vain. If there's a Us, then that implies that there must also be a Them about whom we have absolutely no interest. So now we have an Us and a Them.)

• Worse yet, a couple of years ago I saw a magazine with the title We. (Now we break down the category of Us in a smaller us and Them, and now we are We.)

• And if these weren’t enough among the popular media, there are Self and Oprah Winfrey's magazine titled O.

As we should be celebrating the birth of the King of kings and rendering Him due honor and allegiance, let’s stop to think about what it means “to take” or “to make” something “vain”. What then does it mean to make or render something vain? To make something vain is to make it smaller than life, to diminish or extinguish its substance, worth or value to such an extent that it is no longer useful or valuable.

Again, as God firmly and unequivocally instructs in Exodus, “You shall 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.” This means that the Creator and King of the entire Universe utterly repudiates and forbids any and all attempts to render small, meaningless or valueless His own name and attributes.

For the purpose of this study, the positive statement of this negative command can be reduced to a single question and answer from the Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” The question and answer from the Shorter Catechism clearly yet fluidly define the life, aim and goal of the Christian in such a way as to show how not to bring disrepute or shame on God's name and reputation, or on the faith we have been given. It gives us the positive side to the Third Commandment's negative command. It is the hardest challenge and easiest surrender in the universe. It is a work of faith that costs us nothing and yet demands everything that we have, are and ever will be.

And yet even as we look at the positive statement of the command, we must continually see and appreciate the stress and value of the negative. As we have seen previously, this form of command is called apodictic law. Apodictic law is a form of command that gives enormous stress to the negative proscription. It is akin to saying "Never, ever, never even think of doing the forbidden thing."

That’s why we need to remember the full seriousness of this commandment. We must do so, first, because God made it important by the way in which He issued His decree. We, as His creations and children through faith, must regard the issue with the same degree of seriousness that God does.

Second, we must regard it with that same seriousness because it is for our benefit and eternal health that God gave us the commandment. In the words of the Third Commandment, God safeguards not only His own name, character, reputation and value, but ours as well. God, the singular, perfect, holy, eternal, unchanging Creator of all that has ever existed, has exclusively created humanity in His own image. If, we are to have any ascribed or intrinsic value, then that value comes from the source and supplier of that value. If we diminish God's self-disclosed value and name, then we have diminished or abolished ourselves and our own nature. We become as Narcissus staring balefully at his own reflection in the pool until he dies of broken heart because there are none so perfect as himself.

But in reality, Narcissus died of a reflected delusion. And reflections, we must remember, possess only the pale image and value of the original.

This is a crucial point over which we really must labor.

It is crucial because so many people mis-perceive the true extent of the Third Commandment's power and authority and thereby truncate its real sphere of legal impact. Even many so-called Christians don’t recognize or perceive the solidly real way this commandment is an extension of the two commandments that precede it. Together they form the cornerstone upon which our later appreciation of and obedience to the rest of God's Law is subject. Practically, this means that most people argue that they keep the Third Commandment because they strictly avoid certain specific oral misuses of the Father's and Son's names. True, such abuses are flagrant, significant and severe, but we have to see that simply abstaining from and disapproving of these verbal sins are only the smallest fraction of the true scope of God's injunction against vainly using His name.

We all know individuals (perhaps at times even ourselves) who resolutely refuse to use the Lord's names and attributes in anyway that seems to them blasphemous. And in and of itself, this is a good, wholesome and commendable practice. Unfortunately, many of these same individuals can’t see or refuse to carry it any further. For them, the purpose of this commandment is limited to restricting themselves from uttering the words “God” or “Jesus Christ” in any venues except prayer or worship.

To define this injunction that narrowly is akin to saying that criminal statutes against theft only apply to the unauthorized taking of red sports cars when they are parked in well lit driveways next to residential dwellings and that all other vehicles are “fair game” for the “light-fingered of heart.” Such interpretations of criminal statutes would be so ludicrous as to set new heights in positive stupidity.

Yet we still see people do this all the time as they generalize, specify, rationalize and interpret law nearly out of existence because they dislike the clear trajectory they see coming from those laws. They would far rather have 9 zillion separate specific injunctions against or prescriptions for every conceivable behavior known to humankind. This is the generically human tendency to be like President Clinton and question the meaning of the verb “to be”. It is perfectly human and natural in a fallen world — and it carries absolutely zero substantive weight with the Creator and judge of the universe who has made Himself known by His name and attributes.

We will pick up this study more next month as we begin to see how it applies positively to us as we honor the name of our Triune God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, and as we discuss how to live out our honoring of the One Who creates, redeems and sustains us.

Many you all have a blessed New Year!

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Rusty+