Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Matt. 5:33-37, Exodus 20:7

A woman bought a parakeet from the pet store. When she brought it home, she was horrified to discover that its speech included occasional streams of profanity. She called the pet storeowner and asked how she could break the parakeet from this bad habit. The storeowner suggested that she put the parakeet in her refrigerator each time it used words she did not appreciate. She was told to close the refrigerator door for one minute and then return the bird to his cage. The first two times she tried it, the bird seemed to learn quickly. The situation was improving until the day that the bird let out with a whole sequence of offensive words. The woman was so upset that she took the bird and put him in the freezer for five minutes. After about two minutes in the freezer the bird’s eyes adjusted to the dark. He saw the frozen turkey and said, “Wow, what did you say!?

Most of us think of taking the Lord’s name in vain as equivalent to “trash talk.” Having been an athlete through high school and college, I have heard and participated in my share of trash talk. Cleaning up my language was one of the first things the Lord did when I decided to follow Jesus in college. However, as much as I dislike trash talk, this commandment in the Ten Commandments is not the place we turn to in the Bible to condemn profanity. There are plenty of other places in the scriptures which teach us to speak wholesome words that are helpful and encouraging. If we thought this commandment was primarily condemning foul language, then we have missed the main idea.

Perhaps the issue has been misunderstood due to the confusion of the old King James Version of this commandment , “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Let’s listen to the New Revised Standard Version, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” What is wrongful use?

According to this commandment, God’s people are not to use God’s name the same way that other religions use their gods’ names. In contrast to ancient Israelites, the other nations thought that they could manipulate their gods to do their bidding if they called out the name of their gods like a magic formula.

In 1 Kings 18 we read an example of how the Canaanite religions treated their gods. Elijah, the prophet of Israel, challenged the priests of Baal to a contest. Each side was given an altar and an animal, but neither side could light the fire. The fire would have to fall from heaven. The priests of Baal went first. They danced and chanted until they were weary. They repeated their rituals in order to get Baal to hear them and do their bidding. They repeated their rituals over and over in an attempt to get a handle on their god.

In other words, the Canaanite religions taught their people that certain routines and rituals guaranteed that a particular god would do what they wanted. They believed that one could control the god by using the god’s name in a certain way and performing certain rituals in the right way. They used their god’s name in order to get what they wanted.

If the third commandment were about trash talk, Elijah might be accused of breaking this commandment that day. Elijah taunted the priests of Baal. He made fun of their god in as mean-spirited way as any trash talk heard in competitive sports today. However, Elijah was not breaking the third commandment. In fact, his approach to God was in stark contrast to the approach of the priests of Baal. Instead of trying to manipu-late the Lord, Elijah simply prayed and asked the Lord to send fire. Elijah’s approach was based on his relationship with the Lord. The story ends with the Lord sending the fire and the people of Israel worshipping with the words, “The Lord is God.”

The third commandment shows the contrast between manipulating God versus seeing prayer as a conversation with God. Israel learned in this commandment that the Lord was not a magic charm or object to be manipulated for their wishes. They were not to think they could force God’s hand through their use of the Lord’s name. Instead, they were to seek to align their lives with what God wanted. Any attempt to manipulate God was a violation of this commandment. It was wrongful use of the Lord’s name.

Unfortunately, there were times when the Israelites fell into the trap of imitating the way their neighbors manipulated their gods. One of the classic Bible stories about this is found in 1 Samuel 4. This is an account of the Israelites battling against Philistine enemies.

According to the biblical account, the leaders of Israel became dismayed when their troops lost the opening battle. Four thousand men of Israel died in the battle. That evening, the leaders of Israel met and discussed their options. They needed God’s help to win against the powerful Philistine army. They felt there was not time enough to genuinely humble themselves and seek God’s face. Instead, they came up with a way to force God’s hand. They would carry the holy box used in worship, called the Ark of the Covenant, into the midst of the army. They reasoned that God would not possibly allow the Ark of the Covenant to be captured by their pagan enemies. God would have to help the army win the battle in order to protect the Ark of the Covenant.

God refused to be manipulated in this fashion. God allowed the troops of Israel to be beaten and the holy Ark to be captured. God would not be used like a magic charm. God was not tricked by their attempts to control and make their Lord do what they wanted.

Does this kind of thing happen today? Years ago, when I was teaching at Sheldon Jackson College, in Sitka, Alaska, I traveled with a class of students to San Diego. The students combined visits to Presbyterian churches with a mission project at an orphanage in Tijuana. We traveled for three weeks in January. The rest of the class and instructors departed on a plane to Sitka from the San Francisco airport, while I drove the newly donated college van up to Seattle to leave it at a dock for delivery by ferry to our campus.

By the time I arrived at Seattle I had been away from my family for four weeks. I was anxious and excited to be heading home. As the plane climbed to thirty thousand feet the pilot’s voice came over the speaker system. “We are being advised that Sitka is currently fogged in. We are hopeful that the visibility will clear by the time we are ready for an approach, but I need to let you know that if we are unable to land, we will have to go on to Anchorage. I began to pray, “Lord, I’ve been away for four weeks. I just want to be home. I want to hug my children and wife, and sleep in my own bed. Please, Lord, I want to get home.” That night I slept in Anchorage.

The next day I boarded the plane heading south, with a scheduled stop at Sitka. Even before we left the airport, the pilot announced that there was a fifty-fifty chance of landing in Sitka. They could not promise anything due to the weather. As the plane took off I struck a bargain with God. “I’ll pray and read my Bible the whole way.” I was still reading my Bible when we landed in Seattle. I called Kathy. “Guess where I’m calling from this time?” She had taken the children to the airport and waited as the announcement was made that the plane was overheading on to Seattle. The children were upset with their mom as though it was her fault I did not arrive. Kathy told me to call when I actually arrived at the airport since it was too upsetting to the children to wait and then drive home without me.

On the third day, I promised the Lord that I would fast and skip the plane’s meal in an act of devotion to make my prayers more powerful. I was hungry as we landed in Anchorage and I called a friend to stay at his home again. By the fourth day there were so many passengers backed up that I could not get on a flight. Finally, on the fifth day, I gave up bargaining and trying to control God. I recall praying, “God, it would be nice to be home, but my travels are in your hands. I give up trying to control you.” It was wonderful when the plane finally landed in Sitka!

The issue is manipulation. Whenever we try to manipulate the Lord, we break this commandment. We also break it when we try to use the Lord’s name to manipulate others.

In some Christian settings people attempt to manipulate others with phrases like “the Lord told me,” “the Bible says,” “I’ve prayed about it.” It is an attempt to spiritually trump the other person’s views. I know a young woman who was approached by a young man and told, “The Lord told me you are to be my wife.” She was wise enough to recognize this as a wrongful use of the Lord’s name and responded, “If that were true I think the Lord would have told me also.”

It is a dangerous thing to claim God’s name as though we have God on our side. The early church learned the danger of staking a claim to God’s name in a surprising way. In Acts 19 there is a story about a group of itinerant exorcists who tried to use Jesus’ name to cast a demon from a troubled man. According to this biblical account, they tried to sound authoritative by saying, “I adjure you, by the Jesus whom Paul preaches” (Acts 19:13). The demon reacted harshly. “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” The man attacked the exorcists and cruelly beat them.

At this point in the Bible story it gets very interesting. The Bible tells us that many people gave up their own magic charms and books of incantations. They realized there was something deep and real about meeting and following Jesus. Christianity was not a quick fix religion of chants and prescribed dances to manipulate God. It was a complex relationship with a real person who refused to be manipulated – Jesus.

Listen! Here is the lesson of the third commandment. We can’t manipulate God. Neither do we use God to manipulate others.

So now let’s wrap up this series on the Ten Commandments. We’ve taken them out of order. Let’s remember that this is the Third Commandment. The traditional division of the commandments identifies the first four as commandments about our relationship with God and the last six as commandments about our relationships with each other. This commandment, then says something very important about our relationship with God. God invites us into a loving relationship. Love has no room for manipulation. God won’t even manipulate us to accept the Lord’s love. Love has to be offered and received freely or it isn’t love.

So let me finish this series by asking each of us a question: Have you received God’s love?