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br. br. Brothers, we will now continue, this evening, our reflection on the 10 commandments.
Let us open to Exodus, chapter 20. We are going to read Exodus, chapter 20 verses 1 onwards, then a passage from Leviticus and a passage from Psalm 78. So, Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 7.
Then Leviticus chapter 22, then Psalm 138. And God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. " You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth . You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.
But showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 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 verse seven, I want you brothers to pay attention to it, it is our theme tonight.
Leviticus, chapter 22, verses 31 through 33. So you shall keep my commandments and do them. I am the Lord.
And you shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. I am the Lord.
Psalm 138 verses 1 and 2. I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart. Before the gods I sing your praise.
I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. Amen. Lord.
Amen. Heavenly Father, we give thanks to the Lord for your word. Amen.
And we ask that the Lord feed us with it tonight, strengthen us, purify our understanding, our heart, that this word may bring life to every heart in Jesus 'name. Amen. Brothers, we are now entering the third commandment.
I just want to remind the brothers what we covered previously, how we spoke about the others. First of all, we are working with the three symbols of faith . And we spoke about the Creed, then we spoke about the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer.
And now we are talking about the law. And these three symbols of faith, I have emphasized this, they are very important. They are not trivial things, they are extremely important for the Christian life.
For centuries they have been used as a reference for spirituality, but they have been forgotten by many churches. To the point, you know, of her having told this story. I don't know if she is here , I don't think she came, right?
She told this story about how she met some, uh, she met up with some friends a while ago, and they went to, uh, talk to the pastor of these friends' church, the pastor. And the pastor said, when we were talking about this church, that we don't believe in this creed thing, no. That is a Catholic thing, we don't believe in that.
But the creed speaks of none other than the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, there is a lack of, uh, even literacy today in the Christian environment regarding these very important points. And the creed speaks about our way of believing and about our imagination and our way of thinking about things.
The creed, uh, speaks to the understanding, which is one of our faculties, that we need to understand the God we worship. The Lord's Prayer speaks to our sensibility about how we relate, how we experience God. And Jesus 'prayer speaks of that, about you approaching God as Father, about you recognizing that God's will is good, about you placing your desires and needs before God and you dealing with your bitterness towards others and forgiving.
So, the prayer of Jesus speaks of that, it is therapeutic in that sense. And the 10 Commandments, or this third symbol of faith, appeal to the will. And they have to do with our moral response, with Christian ethics.
And all three are very related, or internally related. The, the creed speaks about what our God is like and about our adoption. It tells us about that.
The prayer of Jesus speaks of our relationship with God as adopted children. That is why it begins by saying "Our Father. " And the 10 Commandments are God's law for His children.
It reflects God's will for His children. So, we talked about law and grace, and how we were freed from the law. In order for us to fulfill the law, we had to be free from the law.
And then we began the commandments, right? So, the introduction to the 10 commandments. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
" And then it says the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me . " So, this first commandment speaks about the purity of our vision of God, about the type of God we relate to. It means we cannot have a God who is not the God of the exodus, the God who brings us out of Egypt.
And a God who justifies our imprisonment in any type of slavery is not the true God, it is an idol, even if preached from the pulpit, right? But according to Exodus chapter 20, the true God is the God who brings us out of Egypt. God had spoken, right?
When He introduced Himself to Moses, Moses asked, "In whose name should I present myself? " Then God said : "You shall say that' I AM 'has sent you. " But the content of' I AM 'only appears later, when God approaches Moses, when Moses asks to see God's glory, then God announces His name.
And He says that He is abounding in mercy and faithfulness. And this expression is fundamental. I don't know if the brothers noticed that in Psalm 138, which we just read, this expression appeared there: mercy and truth.
It appears in several places in the Bible because it reflects God's character. So , the first commandment: we cannot have a vision of God that is not this God. If we start to see God and start to teach a God in the church who is not the God of the exodus, the God who delivers, then that God is not true.
The second commandment speaks about images. So it is a prohibition for us to make representations of God in our own minds. We do not have the autonomy to create an image of God on our own.
The image of God must come from revelation. And the revelation has been given. The glory of God is manifested in creation and the glory of God is manifested in the face of Christ.
So, when we make an idol, we are denying the revelation of God and denying the presence of God. That is the problem. So, the first commandment is for us to lose our way from the true God.
The second commandment forbids us from denying the reality of revelation. For us to say, look, since God is absent, I will create an image to represent Him. That is not necessary.
And when we start wanting to make idols, it's because somehow for us God is absent, which He isn't, for the heavens manifest the glory of God. And the third commandment has a lot to do with the other two. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Many people understand this commandment as a prohibition against saying "oh my God," right? That we cannot say that. If you say "oh my God," that's it, you've taken God's name in vain, you're doomed .
That's not it. That's not it, people. God's name, the big issue at stake here is what you associate the name of God with, what you relate the name of God to.
So, we could paraphrase this as: " You shall not utter the name of the Lord your God for fraudulent purposes or with ulterior motives" and so on. God's name was actually used a lot, people, back in that time. Today that is no longer the case, but it was used for oaths.
So, a person would invoke the name of God as a witness so that they would be accepted, their word, their testimony would be accepted. This was extremely common and was even used in legal proceedings at the time, when invoking blessings, invoking curses, when someone made a deal. So they would make a pact.
Sometimes it wasn't even a covenant, it was just a deal, a business transaction being made. So the name of God was invoked between the parties. Look, if you break your part of the deal, then in the name of God we are swearing that this, this, and that will happen.
Since these curses and blessings were invoked, people took this very seriously, because people really believed that God was alive, right, and that He would act. So the name of God was used in very serious situations to give truth, veracity to something, to give plausibility, to provide support. So this is very important.
What does it mean to take the name of God in vain? It means you use the name of God against God, to use the name of God against the truth. You use the name of God in a manipulative or even rhetorical way, not using God's name because something about the truth is at stake, but because your own interest or some secondary interest is at stake.
And so the name of God is used to validate what you are saying, or what you are arguing, or projecting, or negotiating with someone. So the question is how we view our relationship with God and how that relationship with God affects other things in our lives. It’s not just about that, this doesn’t only apply to that era, which was a legal system where using the name of God had a very important meaning.
But this has a lot to do with our reality today, doesn't it? I’ve already told this story here . The most banal case of taking the Lord's name in vain, the most banal of all, is when there’s a guy in church who wants to win over a girl, so he strikes a holy pose, prays, cries, and all the rest, and brings God into it to seem like a trustworthy person.
Just to win over the religious girl, right? Because only the religious girls can be won over like that. That is a scam, that is taking the name of God in vain.
But that is the most banal example possible. Today at our assembly, we had an assembly earlier today for the brothers who didn't know, right? I actually think most of the brothers who came in the morning didn't even come back tonight.
But I think it was Miriam who brought a newspaper about a new soda. Holy Lion of Judah. A so—what is the name?
Lion of Judah. Lion of Judah Cola. Wow!
Glory to God! Lion of Judah Cola, an article in the Folha Universal. So it's the Lion of Judah, brothers.
Yeah, there's another one already, right? But anyway, Lion of Judah Cola is a social soda, because 10 %of the proceeds will be used for daycares, schools, and things of that nature from the. .
. the from the soda. And besides that, they will recycle the cans, and so on.
It’s an interesting proposal, but we need to ask ourselves about this kind of thing. Should we be using the name of God to sell soda? Oh, so someone might turn around and say: " No, my intention is, I’m selling soda to take 10%and help the poor, okay?
" But what about the rest? What about the other 90, right? What is the what is the intention?
What is the purpose of this, brothers? Of course, every area of our life must be related to God, but in each area of our life, the relationship we have with God is different. And a relationship we can make between God and finances is to absorb the principle of stewardship, economy, resources, and justice, and introduce this principle into our economic activity.
This is fair, legitimate. It is legitimate to use as an argument that you will direct 10%of the profit value to help needy people. This is even a biblical principle of redistribution, right?
But using the name of God as part of the brand's product is not correct. This is taking the name of God in vain. This is denying the holiness of God.
This is doing the opposite of worship. Instead of sanctifying and setting apart the name of God, you trivialize the name of God. You put the name of God on the level of Coca-Cola.
Why do you do that? To attract other believers, so that they can buy the soda and the poor receive their 10%. And also the church receives its 10%.
The idea was invented inside the church itself, the Universal Church. Brothers, this is not correct. This is taking the name of God in vain.
It is using religion, using symbols of faith as an instrument to obtain something else. You stop treating these things as ends in themselves and instrumentalize them. That is the word.
Taking the name of your brother is to instrumentalize the name of God. It is using the name of God for something else, to get a girl, to sell soda, do you understand? A pastor, too, to get ahead in life.
Then he becomes a pastor to do that. This is the same thing. Every time you place the name of God as a means and not an end, then you have taken the name of God in vain.
And today the greatest danger we have, the greatest risk we have today for taking the name of God in vain is our own system of consumption. If there is a complete, finished example of what it is to take the name of God in vain, it is this case I told you brothers about. Maybe the person is very well-intentioned and all, but this is part of the secularization process.
You turn everything into a product, everything into a brand, everything is instrumentalized. This is not correct. So the name of God must be sanctified, set apart.
For the Hebrews, this was so important, brothers, that the name of God was not spoken. The name of God could not even be pronounced. When they wrote the texts, they would just put the consonants and they wouldn't pronounce, they wouldn't say, right, the name of God.
If you pick up a Jewish, Jewish-Messianic text today, you will see they don't even write the word God in full; they put a G, a hyphen, and just a D at the end to show that the name is unpronounceable. So, we have to make an indirect reference. And that is why the book, the Gospel of Matthew, I don't know if you brothers have noticed this, it doesn't speak of the kingdom of God, it speaks of the kingdom of heaven.
It is because the gospel was written for the Hebrews, and the Hebrews respected the name of God so much that they wouldn't say the will of God, they would say the will of heaven. Or rather, they wouldn't say the kingdom of God, they would say the kingdom of heaven to avoid saying the word God. And here we are taking the word of God and putting it on a soda can.
I mean, we are heading in the opposite, right, contrary direction. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. It means that worship , symbols of faith, and the very name of God cannot be used for purposes against their nature.
They cannot be used. Religion cannot be used. The church cannot be used.
The church has a meaning and the gospel message has a political meaning, but it cannot turn into a political instrument. Church matters cannot turn into an instrument for personal gain, cannot turn into a product that you sell. You cannot use anything that has to do with your relationship with God, with worship, as a means to reach something else.
If you go to church and you want prosperity and you are seeking God because of that , you are taking the name of God in vain, because you aren't acknowledging what that means. So, let's remember the text we read from Leviticus. The name of God cannot be profaned.
This is very serious. The name of God cannot be associated with what is inauthentic, with what is false, with what is not transparent, with what is ambiguous. Let's remember now Psalm 138.
I will even reread it. Just look at what the psalmist says in verse two. I will bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted your name and your word above all things.
Steadfast love and faithfulness—that is the truth and the grace that are there in John chapter 1. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth . In that case, they are Greek terms, but they are exactly the same ones found here and in Exodus 33.
Exodus chapter 33. God reveals Himself in this way. So God showed who He is.
This is His name. And this name must be revered . And it cannot be used for anything else.
It is an end in itself. The only use for the name of God is for you to draw near to Him. If you use the name of God for anything else, you have taken the name of God in vain.
So it is not difficult to understand this. Think of a person who approaches you and reveals a secret, something very important to them. And suddenly, or rather you do this, you tell a secret of yours, something very personal, very internal, you show who you are when you tell that.
And then you treat that as something trivial. You do not return the person's trust, or you go around telling it to others, or you tell it and change the story, or you use what the person revealed about themselves to obtain something else. I mean, that would already be horrible for us to do to one another.
It would be horrible to do that to you. So, think that God, brothers, has a holy name. God has a most high name.
And He revealed this name. It was not to just anyone. God revealed this name to the elect, to His people.
And in this name, in this name, He showed His glory, right? Grace and truth. And we take this name of God and use it to sell soda.
That is a sin. Or we use it to make money, or we use it because we are unhappy and we want a way, there is a way to be happy. And we start using religion as an instrument and so on.
There are a thousand ways for you to do this, to use religion as an instrument for something else. Then you have taken the name of God in vain. Brothers, I want to call everyone's attention to what these first three commandments mean.
They are commandments to maintain the purity of the true religion, the purity of religion. So, we must have a pure vision of God. As a God who is love, a God of the exodus, a God who brings freedom, who does not imprison.
We must have a vision of God that is controlled , regulated by revelation. We must remember that God has already revealed Himself, that He is already present, that the glory of God is in creation, is in the gospel. Therefore, we do not need to make idols.
And we need to preserve the purity of everything related to religion, the purity of the church and of our relationship with the symbols of faith. So, these three commandments, brothers, are meant to protect something that is sacred. Because if religion becomes corrupted, folks, everything else follows.
I have already quoted Chesterton's phrase to you. When a man does not believe in God , he believes in anything. This is very serious.
When God is taken out of the picture, we enter a process of corruption that turns into slavery. It is the path to Egypt. Rejecting God's revelation is Egypt.
When we start to take God's name in vain, then start making idols, deny God's presence, and then forget the Triune God, who is the God of love, then we return to Egypt. Then slavery, suffering. So, to preserve the faith, these three things are fundamental.
Our vision of relationship with the true God, our recognition of God's revelation in nature and in the Bible, and the preservation of the purity of religion —preserving, hallowing God's name, preserving God's name. So, let's pray about this. Place your life before the Lord right now.
I will quote Psalm 138 again while you pray. What is the attitude we must have? We must hallow God's name, as the Lord's Prayer says, right?
Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I will give thanks to Thee, O Lord, with all my heart. In the presence of the mighty, I will sing praises to Thee.
I will bow down toward Thy holy temple. I will praise Thy name for Thy mercy and Thy truth, for Thou hast magnified Thy name and Thy word above all things. Amen.
Heavenly Father, we stand before You in the name of Jesus and ask that You give us grace not to take Your name in vain, that we may hallow Your name, that we may cooperate with You in the hallowing of Your name, which is Your work. O God , we ask that You deliver us from using faith, religion, communion with You, and Your name for other goals, with ulterior motives. Lord, give us a pure heart for You.
May our relationship with You be an end in itself. May it not be an instrument for something else. May we be protected .
We ask to stop using You, O God. May You have Your sanctified place, set apart at the center of our lives. Deliver us, Lord, from falling into this sin and grant us the grace to help others come out of it.
In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
