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[Music] The tendency to trivialize, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Heelman. [Music] Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is found in the book of Exodus,

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the 20th chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 1. The passage is, of course, the 10th commandment. And God spoke all these words. "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

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You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

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but showing love to thousands who love me and keep my commandments. 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.

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Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals nor the alien within your gate. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them,

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but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 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.

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You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

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You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. And may God bless you all this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God is not anonymous. You know what an anonymous letter is.

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Anonymous letters are usually vulgar, sometimes obscene. God is never anonymous. His signature, his name, his monogram, his seal is on everything that he does. God hates obscurity and therefore he always comes to us in clarity.

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God has a name. His name is holy. It is not holy because anyone made it holy. It is holy because it belongs to him.

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Everyone in heaven understands that. The redeemed saints and the angels cry out, "Holy, holy, holy art thou, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory." If you want to know how holy the name of God is, consider this.

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Under the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul describes for us in the second chapter of the book of Philippians that which was done to Jesus when he returned to heaven, how God chose to honor him. Paul writes that God honored his most beloved, his only begotten son, by giving to him the name that was above every name. A name so high and so holy that everyone, everywhere, when they heard it, fell upon their knees and confessed that Jesus Christ was to have nothing less than the name of God.

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Jesus Christ is Lord. That word "Lord" is the English equivalent of the Greek word "kureos". The Greek word "kureos" is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word "Athonai". And the Hebrew word "Athonai" is the name used by the Hebrews to refer to God.

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They understood his name to be so holy that rather than uttering it, they substituted the name "Athonai". The name of God was understood to be so holy by the early Jews that if a scribe were to write the name of God, he had first to bathe, then to dress himself ritually. He could not, once he had begun writing the word, dip his pen in the ink again until he had finished it. And if anyone interrupted him during the writing, even if he was called by a king, he could not respond.

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He had to finish writing the name of God. God's name is holy. And now I will tell you a very amazing and puzzling thing. God has made his name known here on the earth.

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Now we would be very careful about those to whom we would give our name. We would be very careful about those to whom we would give our signature. For someone might misuse it, forge it, take advantage of it by the use of it. But God, loving us in our brokenness and our ugliness and our sinfulness, gave us his name.

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He could have kept it, if he wished, in that realm above the stars where only saints and angels would have heard it and spoken of it. But he gave it to us here. When I was a boy, we had an expression we used to refer to a person's name. We called a person's name his handle.

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"What's your handle?" we'd say. "How can I get hold of you? What is the name that you have?" God gave us his handle. Now the fact that God gave us his handle does not make it any less holy.

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God put his mercy before his holiness. God can do that. But we can't. And that's the reason when God gave us his name, he also gave us a commandment.

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He said, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain." What God is saying to us here is this. "I give you my name, but you must not abuse it or misuse it. You must at no time trivialize it. You must not make my name an expression of meanness or of meaninglessness.

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For if you mock my name, you mock me. And if you mock me and my name, you mock the very love that is in my heart which led me to give you my name." And yet every day of our lives we hear God's name profaned. I believe I am far within the mark when I say that of all the Ten Commandments, this is the one that is most frequently broken.

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Consider, for example, how we trivialize God in profane language. Now as soon as I speak about profane language, most people immediately think of cursing. They think that this commandment forbids cursing, that that is its point and its purpose. Oh no, that's too simple.

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It's much too easy to say that because you see, most of us don't curse. And if we do curse, we do not think of it as a very serious thing. No, no, it's much too easy to say that this Third Commandment is concerned only with cursing. Cursing, in terms of its witness in Scripture, is really a very minor thing.

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It is not mentioned much. Cursing is not enough to make the list of the top ten sins. Oh no. The Third Commandment speaks about something much more than that.

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I am not saying that cursing is good or a right thing. Cursing is certainly wrong. Those who curse are usually caught up in trying to demonstrate one of three things. They're trying to demonstrate that they do not intend to please God,

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that they have no reverence or respect for Him, in fact hold Him in contempt. Or they are perhaps trying to demonstrate that they are mature. There are many who believe that ostentatious displays of unbelief give them a certain toughness and independence. I read an article recently in which it was pointed out that many motion picture producers and authors

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now include profanity in their films and their books because then their books and their films will be given an X rating which is seen to be more sophisticated, more mature. So some curse to appear mature. And then some curse, and by doing so demonstrate simply that they lack sufficient education

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to express themselves forcibly without cursing. There are those who have learned so little, have mastered our language to such an inadequate degree that the only way in which they can demonstrate power in their speech is by the use of the uncouth. Of course, when you do that, you need to remember that you not only denigrate God, you also denigrate yourself.

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If we are made in the image of God, then to defame God is to defame ourselves. We have the royal blood of heaven flowing in our veins. We are made as the children of God. To assault the Father is to assault his sons and daughters.

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There was a young French prince who in the process of his education was being taught by some older men how to curse. He responded, "I will not do it, I will not do it, I am the son of a king and I will not do it." He was saying, you see, that his royal nature for bad is doing such a contemptible thing.

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We need to remember that should we be tempted to curse. But though cursing is wrong, there is much more to the Third Commandment than it. For the Third Commandment, you see, says that we are not to mock God with any of our speech. We are never to use or misuse his name.

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We are never to dishonor or trivialize him. And understanding that to be the sense of this Word, I have to say to you tonight that the worst profanity that I hear is not at parties, but in pulpit. I must confess to you my deep distress over hearing those who are to proclaim or to teach the Word of God

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dragging that name and that Word down into the dust of intellectual indolence, down into the squalor of lack of learning and stupidity. There are so many today who in the name of religion are nonchalant with God and unconcerned with the holiness of God.

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They handle his name like some coin which they rub between their fingers or let slip between their fingers. And they maul it and smear it until all the outlines and stampings are gone. Or they handle it like some greasy five-dollar bill which should have been recalled a long time ago and hasn't been. We talk a lot about inflation today.

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Inflation is when the value of our money goes down. There is within the fellowship of the Church today a number of people who handle the name of God in such a way that they devalue it till it has lost its worth. And there are those who are still, who forge and counterfeit upon that name,

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making breezy and casual references to Christ, talking about God as if he was some kind of celestial bellhop or busboy. The Chicago Tribune pointed out in an article last week that names have definite connotations. Here's a woman named Gertrude.

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If she will have herself be called "Trudy," she will be seen to be much more sophisticated and entertaining. Dawn is more casual than Donald. Charlie we all know to be a fellow with a good sense of humor. Charles is very sober and dignified.

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Chuck, he's the kind of guy that likes to drink beer and watch TV. We are ready to listen to E.F. Hutton. How many of us would be ready to listen to Eustace Feldman Hutton? Names carry connotations.

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The connotation of the name of God is eternity and power and light and beauty and holiness and justice and truth. And that name must not be used trivially. But we hear so used. The music that is often offered in praise of God today. Honky-tonk tunes. Hurdy-gurdy melodies. Ballads that would sound just as appropriate in a bar room.

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Change a few lyrics and they become torch songs to the Savior. Tooty-fruity melodies. Saccharine sentimentality. Chewing gum rhythms. The gospel according to Barry Manilow.

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And it's used to praise the name of the one who is altogether holy. It is quite common, of course, among youth. And yet I think it can be excused in you because you are young. You have been educated in public schools and therefore your education is superficial.

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And young people are by nature both short-sighted and narrow-minded. You have a tendency to see things only in simple terms. You have not gotten to the place in education where you understand that when the mind really begins to search out some problem, some thing of worth, it discovers that it must finally get down on its knees in reverence before all the immensity of truth,

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and that it must concentrate with all the power that it has on bringing something forth that is worthy of the truth it seeks. Truth is not found in triviality. And the wise mind knows that. Not just the aged mind, for there are many who are aged without wisdom.

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I hear adult teachers in Sunday school. I hear pastors in pulpits who give no evidence of using their mind strenuously in their preaching. They have not wrestled with the text. They have not sought out the languages.

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They do not know the latest archaeological or hermeneutical or etymological evidence that has been advanced. They do not know any of these things. They have not prepared. They have turned their studies into a lounge, and when a man's study is a lounge, his pulpit is an impertinence.

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They recite to us in the name of God old dogmas which are the fruit of their pride brought forth in intellectual sloth. And their principal desire is to dominate and intimidate. And their preaching and their teaching is disgusting and repulsive. I say it is disgusting and repulsive because it is sinful, and sin is disgusting and repulsive.

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Please turn your cassettes to the other side. Taking God's name in vain in pulpit or behind devotional lectern is the greatest curse of the Church. You may mark this down as being absolutely true. The more you know about anything, the more you know that you know very little indeed.

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Religion does not relieve us of the duty of thought. Religion is the beginning of our thinking. Religion is not the end of our study. Religion is that which keeps us from going in circles when we study.

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Our faith is that something on which we stand in order to reach out for anything else. Our faith is what we know of God revealed, which wants us and leads us to pant after everything else about him we can be good to know. But that kind of searching out of God, that kind of thing when it's done from a pulpit or a lectern, makes the preacher die a little bit. You've got to be willing to burn out in the search of it.

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You've got to be able to use up some of that in you which cannot be replaced. Anything less than that is offering that which is not a living sacrifice. And that which is not a living sacrifice trivializes God. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

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Think of how we trivialize God in our life. And think, too, of how we profane and trivialize God in our living. We have been baptized. When we were baptized, either by our own choice or presented by our parents, we were baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

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God's name enveloped us. In the moment of baptism, we covenanted with God, or our parents on our behalf covenanted with God, and God covenanted with us. We made promises to him, he made promises to us. If either party, if God does not keep his promises, or we do not keep our promises, then God's name in whom the covenant is made has been falsified.

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God keeps his promises. But what about us? Are we obedient? Are we passionate about our believing?

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Are we urgent and in earnest about our faith? Or are our promises hypocritical and deceitful? So many are utterly unconcerned, so many who claim the name of God are so utterly unconcerned with God's promises of judgment. Now God's promises of judgment are not happy things.

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None of us like to hear about judgment, but God's promises of judgment are given to us for our good. We need to remember that he has said to us, "The wages of sin is death." "The soul that sins, it shall surely die." "Inasmuch as you have not done loving things to the least of my brethren, ye have not done them to me, depart into the outer darkness."

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"Many will come to me and say, 'Lord, Lord,' and I will say to them, 'Depart from me, I never knew you.'" "Whosoever heareth my word," Jesus says, "and does it not, shall be like a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand," "and the storms come, and the winds blow, and the rains fall, and the house falls, and great is the fall thereof." It is the height of stupidity to know the promised judgments of God and to treat them trivially.

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When I was in college we used to go out on gospel teams, five or eight of us at a time. On one particular trip I was staying in a home. They put me in the extra bedroom, which was in the attic. I wakened about six o'clock in the morning. I was wakened by the fact that a little girl was standing right beside my bed staring at me.

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I didn't want to get up that early, but as soon as I was wakened I smelled the breakfast being prepared downstairs and I thought that I better get up, so I said to the little girl, "You go downstairs and I'll get up." "No," she said, "I want to stay here." I said, "Well, I want to get dressed," and she said, "Yes, and I want to watch you get dressed."

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And being a very modest soul, I suggested to her with a little more enthusiasm that she leave. She did. She went downstairs, and I heard her mother say to her downstairs, "Now don't you bother our guests. You stay here and help me set the table." And I got out of bed and began to take off my pajamas, and I was halfway through taking them off

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when I looked over and there she was standing in the door looking at me. And this is what she said. I shall never forget it. She said, "You say no, and Mommy says no, but I say okay, so I'm staying." That, simply and profoundly, is the very essence of sin.

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To know what the Father says, to know his promises of judgment, and to say, "Because I think it's okay, I will do it anyway," is to make his name and his will of no account. It is to mock God.

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And the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain. The Ten Commandments appear in three places in Scripture, once in Deuteronomy and twice in Exodus. In Exodus 34, this commandment with which we are concerned tonight, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," appears in a slightly different form.

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It reads, "Thou shalt not come before the Lord thy God empty." You see, to treat God's name as if it had no meaning, to treat his judgments and his promises of judgment as if they had no impact, no influence, that kind of faith is worthless. It is empty. It is nothing.

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We speak of Jesus as the light of the world. We need also to remember that he is the lightning of the world. And in his light, those who deny his Father's name and his Father's judgment will be revealed. We think of him in Revelation 5 where he is described as holding the seven stars in his hand,

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and that comforts us by the promise of Christ's presence. Or his having a countenance like the sun, and that comforts us for he brings light into our darkness. We forget that that picture concludes, describing him as having a two-edged sword coming from his mouth,

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and that sword is the expression of his judgment. To be trivial with the promises, judgments of God is folly. And how many, how many of those who claim his name are unconcerned with his promises of hope? Trivial about his judgments, they are also trivial about his pledged blessings.

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There is a theology about today which is much honored and justifiably so, called the theology of hope. And the gentleman whose thought is behind it is a German theologian named Jürgen Moltmann. And in the book from which the theology takes its name, A Theology of Hope, he says, "Unbelief is denying the promises of God."

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If that is so, then how many who claim his name could more accurately be described as unbelieving, because they deny his promises of hope? How many there are, for example, who are very anxious about the Church? They're worried about the Church. They are afraid for the Church.

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The promises of God say that the Church of God will endure forever. Not even the gates of hell will stand against it. Why then do people fret over the Church? Many times because they have no sense of the Church's history.

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Charles Schulz, who writes Pena, has Sally say to Charlie Brown one day, "In order to understand the Church, you must first understand its history." Now let's go back to the beginning. Our pastor was born in 1930.

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Some people's understanding of the Church goes no farther back than that. They don't understand that the things which are in some difficulty within the Church today, the nature of denominations, the size of Sunday schools, the breakdown of ecumenical organizations, all of those things have come to be in the history of the Church only within the last 200 years.

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They are, to this point at least, nothing but footnotes in the Church's history. If they pass away, the Church itself will still endure. And these people need also to remember that out of uneasy sanctuaries have come some of God's greatest spokesmen.

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Amos came out of a time when the Church was in trouble. Jeremiah came out of such a time. Augustine came out of such a time. Luther came out of such a time.

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Martin Luther King came out of such a time. Mother Teresa, Father Damien, Ron Snyder, Ernest Campbell, they have all come out of such a time. I will say to science, "Beware, for with the blessings you have brought has often come blight." And I will say to philosophy, "These Frankensteins of pragmatism and utilitarianism and futilitarianism

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which you have created will destroy us." And I will say to psychiatry, "Go hide behind your skirts of guilt fantasies and self-expressions." And I will say to big governments, "Stop intruding into the lives of individuals raping the rest of the world supposedly in behalf of our national interest

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and maneuvering us ever closer to nuclear holocaust." And I will say to big business corrupted by its lusting after profits instead of people and ruining young attorneys, making them prostitutes who debate the law of the land in order to get more of business' dollars.

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I will say to all of these, "Grovel before God." But to the Church, I will say, "Adorn yourself as the bride for her bridegroom." For this is the promise of God. The Church is not to be afraid, but in faith strong.

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And there are those who doubt God's promises of hope, not necessarily with the Church, but with individuals. Yet God's promises to individuals are just as valid as those to the Church. Do the Scriptures not say, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them?"

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One of my greatest teachers was Dr. Addison Leach. A great number of years ago he was, for a short time, the Dean of Men on this campus. Addison Leach never held a pastorate, though he was an ordained minister. He told me once in private conversation why that was so.

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He could not bear going into a hospital. He knew that any minister would have to go again and again into hospitals, and he could not bring himself to that, and so he never went into the pastoral ministry. He stayed in the educational ministry all of his life.

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But at the end of his life, he got cancer, and he was in the hospital for a long, long time. And he began to doubt the promises of God's hope, and his faith was weakened within him. And he went down into despair. But then, and there, in despair, he thought again of God's promises,

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and having known those promises to have been fulfilled in all of his life, he claimed those promises of hope again, and he came to a newness of faith. Now, the cancer, which was his, was so awful that every time he moved, his bones broke. And on the last day of his life, he was lying in bed with his arms on pillows,

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and in his one hand he held the hand of his wife, and in his other hand he held the hand of one of his daughters. And he was speaking to them of the promises of God and Christ about hope, and suddenly, as he spoke to them, he looked up, and he said,

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"Jesus, O my Jesus!" And he let go of his wife's hand, and he let go of his daughter's hand, and he reached up, and he was gone. But the promises he gave were fulfilled for him.

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No matter how dark it is, never doubt God's promises of hope, for to doubt them is to mock God, and to mock God's love. It is to make trivial that which he died to make true. The third commandment calls us to be serious about God,

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to be reverent and respectful, to serve him and to trust him, to never use his name meanly or meaninglessly. It calls us never to mock him, but to be passionate and urgent and earnest in our faith, to offer not only our lips, but our very lives to him.

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I close with this. In the year 999, many people believed that Jesus was about to return. Their understanding of the millennium was that at the end of a thousand years, Jesus would return. As the months in that year passed, the churches were crowded with worshippers.

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Confessions were being heard 24 hours a day. Stealing, the chronicler records, stopped. There was no cheating. Bakers gave away bread free to the hungry, and butchers did the same.

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Employers were reconciled with their employees, and people who had been separated and at enmity with each other came into one another's arms and were reconciled. On the last night of the year, a great service of worship was held in Rome.

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Pope Sylvester II presided. A great clock was in the sanctuary, ticking away the seconds, and as the time got close to midnight, the worshippers fell on their faces, afraid to look up. Just shortly before midnight, the clock stopped ticking,

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and it is recorded that some there out of sight died on the spot. At midnight, the bell of the clock rang, and the Pope raised his arms, and the choir began to sing "Se Deum Laudamus," "To God be the praise."

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They were, of course, quite wrong in their millennial understanding. But they were, of course, quite right in the seriousness with which they approached their relationship to God. May we so live, never trivializing God, never trivializing the glorious thing it is to be his time, called by his name.

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Let us pray. O God, if any word has been spoken here which is worthy of thy blessing, then write that word, we pray thee, on the tablets of our hearts. And if any word has been spoken here which is less than thou wouldst have it be,

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let that word be dropped into the deepest sea of our forgetfulness. For we would remember only that which is acceptable to thee. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.