Deuteronomy

Taking God’s Name in Vain

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 15-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 015

Dictation Name: RR187H15

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Not unto us oh Lord, not unto us but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy and for Thy truths sake. Help us oh God of our salvation for the glory of Thy name and deliver us and purge away our sins for Thy name’s sake. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. It is better to trust in the Lord then to put confidence in man. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusteth in him. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy merciful and providential care. We thank Thee that by Thy grace we have been delivered from the fire and the storm. And we pray that Thou wouldst be with those who lost their homes. Strengthen, comfort and bless them. We thank Thee that our times are in Thine hands who dost all things well. Give us grace to walk in faith, to trust in Thee and to know that Thou art God and beside Thee there is none other. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 5:11 and our subject: Taking God’s Name in Vain.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”

When man reads the Bible he seems determined to take the most minimal meaning wherever possible. To make the bible mean as little as he can make it. As a result, this commandment is read as a prohibition of the vain use of God’s name as profanity. Certainly this is true but is this all the law means? Is it even the primary meaning? Now in the Bible name and person are closely linked. The name is expressive of the person. God’s name is a statement that makes clear that he transcends definition. His name Jehovah I am that I am, I am beyond definition, although he reveals His nature in His revelation. The biblical doctrine of names tells us that names should be a form of identification and should tell us about the person named.

For this reason people in the bible often changed names. They changed names as their character developed; they changed names as God renamed them. We do not know the original name of Abraham but we know that it was first changed by God to Abram and then to Abraham. Since a name represents in the Bible the person named it also represents his person. We have this still in English in terms such as ‘in the name of the king’ or ‘in the name of the law’. Thus the name of God represents all the authority of the triune God. It means therefore that to take God’s name in vain means primarily and essentially to invoke His authority falsely. In this sense taking the Lord’s name in vain is more a sin of churchmen then of unbelievers. Any church that calls itself God’s or Christ’s church and does not believe the whole word of God, every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God is taking the name of the Lord in vain and is guilty of violating this commandment. We understand from this meaning of name why and married woman as well as an unmarried daughter or daughters carry the name of the husband and the father. They signify thereby that they are under his care and authority. It is a protective covering. This makes clear the meaning of Isaiah 26:13: “Oh Lord our God other lords beside Thee have dominion over us but by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name.” The meaning of the second clause ‘by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name’ is having sinned and repented. We will now rely on Thy name or authority only and we will acknowledge none other name. None other gods means none other names. And none other names means none other gods, none other overruling authority. The name of God is His self-revelation. God reveals himself in his law word. It is the expression of His being and of his person. To take God’s name in vain means to despise or to neglect God’s law word while professing His name.

Because when you take His name you live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. An ancient inscription was discovered in [unknown] not too many years ago that read ‘Ashtoreth’ the name of Baal, meaning that this Ashtoreth or goddess was a manifestation of Baal because the name is the person. In the New Testament in the name of the Lord is repeatedly cited from the Old Testament as a term to indicate that God’s authority is fully with the Lord Jesus Christ and with His apostles. According to [unknown] the biblical doctrine of name can be summed up in three propositions. First [unknown] is more emphatic than I am. He holds the name is the person. The name IS the person and this is supremely true of God and this is true to some degree of all of us. We think of ourselves inseparably from our name. When asked who we are we give our names. It is who we are. We are not anonymous and we do not like being reduced to a number. One of the punishments of imprisonment is being reduced to a number. There was a great deal of bitterness when that practice began on the part of prisons. It did not help their moral, it did not help reform them. It filled them with bitterness and hatred for the establishment that stripped them of the name and gave them a number. I can remember when social security began and the anger of people at being reduced to a number and I know that a great many of people at that time that Washington had become the beast of Revelation. Again, when computerization began and everybody was reduced to a number. Do you remember how the Berkeley student rebellion began? It was over computerization.

Slips or tickets that marked each student and were do not fold, bend or mutilate. That was what triggered the whole thing, they were reduced to numbers. We are not numbers, we are persons and we have names. But when people actually seek anonymity their society begins to die because it was being depersonalized and dehumanized. Then second, the name is the person revealed. Isaiah to make strong his point speaks of the name of Yahweh rather than simply Yahweh or Jehovah because the name of Yahweh means ‘Yahweh’ in all the fullness of His presence, His power, His holiness, His wrath and His grace. And all this is revealed in His character, in His name. He is He Who Is, I am that I am. The source of all definition, I cannot be defined because I am the definer of all things. God’s name is a refuge because God has revealed Himself to be so. Our social security will not identify ourselves to other people, only to Washington, but our name will. Then third, [unknown] says the name is the person actively present. To call upon the name of the Lord is to invoke his presence; to invoke the name of the law is to invoke the state’s power and authority. To carry a name is to carry the fact of a person and a family and the authority the family may have. Now to return to the common idea of this commandment it is certainly true that profanity is a serious misuse of the name of God. It is certainly a form of prohibited speech. All the same we must see the misuse of the name of God, of Christian, of Jesus Christ, of Christianity and so on as far more serious. To invoke the authority of God and to use his name for institutions and for churches that do not live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is blasphemy. It is the main violation of this commandment. None such man and none such churches are guiltless. The Hebrew word translated as vain has the connotation of evil, desolation or desolating, futile, useless, false or lying. To take the name of the Lord in vain means that God’s name is actively put to evil use and is used to mask ungodliness.

Its use is a deception so it can refer to false labeling, calling something godly when it is thoroughly ungodly. We for example now have books which claim that the bible does not oppose homosexuality only homosexual prostitution. Besides being deconstructionist studies such studies are blasphemous and are clear violations of this commandment. They take the name of the Lord in vain, in falsity and for evil purposes. The most serious violations of this commandment are thus not by the ungodly, however serious their contempt for God and their profanity, they are obviously evil and all their lives are futility and vanity. But those who profess to be Christ’s faithful servants and then treat his law word as a plastic and malleable to be used as man sees fit and to take what they want and to leave what they don’t want are the evil ones who take His name in vain. God will not hold them to be guiltless. He will have His vengeance on the guilty ones. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain. All that I have said is nothing new. You can find it in dictionaries and biblical encyclopedias, in commentaries and more. Why then have for generations upon generations men reduced the meaning of this text. Don’t use profanity. True. But what have they done? Why they’ve said this commandment doesn’t apply to us who never swear, we’re nice church people. It applies to those people out there so we’re safe. Meanwhile their church may be bearing the name of Christ and doubting his word, or professing to believe the Bible from cover to cover, not practicing it. Believing only a little part of it. Using the idea of dispensations to eliminate most of it. Isn’t it convenient to be able to take the Bible and make it apply to other people?

This is why a very obvious meaning is not proclaimed from the pulpits. Because that obvious meaning says as the prophet of God said the king, thou art the man. And it applies today to all with the name of Christian upon their building and are taking the name of God in vain. This commandment strikes close to home. And this is why its meaning has been cheapened and dissipated. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word and for its plain speaking. Lord grant that Thy word in this generation be preached in all its meaning, in all its power. So that those in the church and out of the church may tremble and be saved. Might know that Thou art God and beside Thee there is none other. That Thy word shall prevail, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Great art Thou oh Lord and greatly to be praised. Preserve us from taking Thy name in vain. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

[Question] The Lord God is a very tolerable God, isn’t He?.

[Rushdoony] His patience exceeds the patience of men even as His love and His wrath exceed that of men. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Not only within the last hundred years did all people have family names that meant something, they also had clan names, and I’m not talking only about the Scottish peoples who used the term clan but other peoples. A Frenchman belonged to a certain group or family of peoples and friends, a German to those within Germany, with close ties. And often there were differing accents depending on the clan or the tribe or the broader family and all this was important. Is true in some countries to this day, if your family is not known in some of the out of way portions of the world you cannot get a job. Because you are anonymous and if your family is not known you are assumed to be an outlaw because you’ve separated yourself from those who can vouch for you, back you. And post if necessary a bond for you. So we have worked actually for anonymity.

I recall a good many years ago on my way back to north-eastern Nevada there were a great many people on the train; in fact it was full of people who were going to Reno. And I found this to be true on a few other trips as well, bus and by train. And they were going to do certain things that they could have done at home but why did they go to Reno? Well nobody knows me there. They wanted anonymity in order to sin. And of course in a century that wants to throw off God’s law, to be immoral as their lifestyle, anonymity is a big plus. So a desire for anonymity goes hand in hand with the rise of evil. Yes?

[Question] Black people lost their names and I’ve forgotten the name of the novelist that wrote ‘nobody knows my name’ …[unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that’s true in South Africa with American blacks that go there and elsewhere in Africa. Yes, in many parts of the world a name is still very important. But consider for a moment the great evil that was represented in giving prisoners numbers. It began precisely when they set up reformatories supposedly to reform the prisoners. Named each little unity, a cell, after the monastic cell, that’s where they got the term. This was to reform them, then they gave them numbers. Which made clear how they felt about them. These humanists who set up the prison system were bent on dehumanizing the people they were trying to reform.

[Man speaks] In contrast to the monastic order in which they took a new name to symbolize the fact that they were entering a new world.

[Rushdoony] Very good point. They were saying that you’ve taken your first step into the heavenly city. The new creation, and therefore you take on a saint’s name. And of course from that the custom of giving every child a saint’s name as well. Yes?

[Question] The [unknown] of prisons, that’s an embarrassment to the people whose in charge of the prisons too because ninety percent of the people who come out, they go back, I think it’s higher than that, ninety five percent.

[Rushdoony] Yes and most of them return before long. Yes?

[Question] That point, I’ve done the research on that subject..[unintelligible] a certain percentage of that die or mature and a certain percentage we must assume reform.

[Rushdoony] But no thanks to the prison system. No. Well consider the fact that the majority of Americans it has been said, I don’t know how true it is, don’t know their social security number. They don’t want to know it. And it’s a long number. And yet as far as the Federal government is concerned, and the IRS, they are a number. Now, no sane and healthy individual is going to like that type of identification. He will resent it. And he will resent that order which reduces him to a number, it’s as though he were also an inmate. Well if there are no further questions- yes?

[Question intelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well, the rifle number makes sense because the rifle is anonymous although it’s interesting that in the days of the frontiers going back to Daniel Boone frontier men gave their rifles names, I believe Daniel Boone called his Old Betsy.

[Question unintelligible] I remember when I was a youngster you would read books where law enforcement officers would call out to fleeing subjects ‘stop in the name of the law’. Of course this isn’t used any more, I’ve always assumed that they were talking about the name of the civil law or criminal law. At that time were they eluding to a higher authority?

[Rushdoony] No they were alluding to the state, in the name of the law, the state’s law. In the medieval era where it was God’s law, it was God. In other words, to the law and the name refer to the source of the law. Well if there are no further questions or comments, and you are welcome to make any further, we have a few minutes, but if not- yes?

[Question] While we’re on the subject of the law, what is the common law? I’ve read several version of it and…

[Rushdoony] The common law is basically biblical law, which once governed the English speaking world if not other areas as well in Europe. And just as the prayer book of the Church of England is called the Book of Common Prayer so the law that came out of the bible was called the common law because it was common to all. It governed all. The common law once governed most of the United States; it’s still technically a part of the law. And occasionally lawyers still make use of it. The common law has some defects in the eyes of lawyers; it very seriously limits legal fees. So that use of the common law can be a problem. However, common law by the time of Lincoln and the civil war had begun to be replaced by statute law and especially after that, statute law rapidly replaced common law. Statute law being that made by legislators, congress and such bodies. Now administrative bodies, common law which had previously ruled was simply God’s law. Now what we call legislative bodies were called general court or something like that and their purpose was primarily to be the people’s watchdog over the governor and any other elected official. That’s all changed.

[question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No, some scholars have pointed out, most notably [unknown], that it was God’s law. Yes?

[Question] The presidents acceptance speech the other night, I don’t know if you heard that, he referred [unintelligible] the closing words were God bless America but during the speech and in a very rousing fashion he numerated the many things that he had done as president including the breakup of the Soviet Union [becomes unintelligible again]

[Rushdoony] Yes he didn’t do it, he was surprised when it happened, as surprised as the rest of us. And for him to claim these things for his own is really taking the name of the Lord in vain. He claimed too much. Well, let us now conclude in prayer.

Our Father, it is good for us to be here. Thy word is truth and Thy word speaks to our every condition and need, Thy word blesses us and strengthens us. Make us ever joyful in Thee and in Thy word. And no go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.