First And Ten : Beware When You Swear - (Full Experience)

I wanna welcome everyone to Fellowship Church. Thank you for joining us online today. I'm talking about a very controversial subject, but a subject that's at the forefront of where we are. I'm talking about the third commandment. Let's say you slid into a trendy coffee shop by yourself and you were sipping your favorite latte. Just picture yourself there. You know, the cool music and the cool people at different tables. And if you're like me, you sometimes eavesdrop or you listen to what people are saying. I mean, you can't miss what they're saying. And what the crazy thing is about coffee shops or airplanes, I guess, or restaurants, when you overhear a conversation, you can pretty much immediately tell a lot about the person. You can tell what the person, for example, does for a living in many situations. Like, what if you heard this phrase? We had three offers before noon. Well, you would come to the conclusion, okay, Ed, that's probably someone in real estate. Okay? What if you heard this at another table next to you? Let's run labs and adjust the dosage. A doctor. Did you guess that? Yeah, okay. We need to rebalance the portfolio.

You heard a table say that. You're probably looking at a financial advisor. I'll be grading papers until midnight. That's gonna be a teacher. Let's consider the risks if this goes to arbitration. That's an attorney. What would it take to earn your business? That's a sales person. Because I said so. That's a stay-at-home mom. Sorry, we're waiting on the city. That's a contractor or a builder. Here's one more. God. Oh. I ask you, what does that person do for a living? What are they about? Well, because there's such a regularity of vulgarity out there. It could be a man, a woman, a boy, a student. It could be someone who is an entrepreneur. It could be someone who is in the working class. It could be a teacher, a coach. It could be anyone. Our culture has cascaded into swearing, into cussing. It's like we're all a part of this swear-a-thon. And I know what you're saying. You're going, oh, well, Ed,

that's just what the culture does. The culture is ungodly. If that's your answer, if that's your excuse, you're in severe trouble. My brother speaks Spanish fluently. I wish I did, but I don't. He learned Spanish by moving to Mexico City, living with a family while he did mission work for a month. And when he emerged from that, he could speak Spanish fluently. So I ask you, who are you immersing yourself with? Who are you rubbing shoulders with? I mean, if we're rubbing shoulders and being around the right groups of people that honor the name of God, that revere the name of God, that love the name of God, we, friends, are gonna speak that language. If we don't, it's not gonna happen. But again, I go to Exodus 20, verse seven. Here's the third commandment. Are you ready? Think about the children of Israel hearing this. Think about being camped out at the base of Mount Sinai. Think about Moses reading this out in his booming voice. 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. Ouch. Leviticus chapter 24 records one of the first fights

in the Bible. I'm not sure if they were using jujitsu or what, but one Israelite got whacked. I'm not sure if it was from some kind of a kick or whatever. And when he absorbed the blow, the Bible tells us he blasphemed the name of God. He cursed, he probably said, God damn it. They took this guy, the guy who had blasphemed the name of the Lord, in front of Moses and the leaders, they killed him. That's how serious God takes this command. So what this command says is, it says don't use the name of God, don't denounce it or pronounce it in a frivolous or flippant manner. That's what it says. Continuing it says, whenever you articulate the name of the Lord, do so with honor and praise and love and respect. Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, this word vain in the Hebrew is pronounced Shaw. It means to empty, it means literally to gut. When we take God's name in vain, we are gutting the grace of God. Yet I know many of us when we do that or use vulgar language, we don't realize what we're doing. But I'll tell you again, we've been bombarded by bad language. It's like the people that know God the least use his name the most.

Have you ever heard of this show, Landman? Lisa and I tried to watch it for a while and I came to a quick conclusion. If you remove profanity and vulgarity out of Landman, old Billy Bob Thornton would only say about two words and the whole series will be done in 30 minutes. Bad Bunny, he's really popular. He's gonna be at the Super Bowl. Wow, how pathetic is that? Anyway, if you took vulgarity and pornography and taking the Lord's name in vain out, Bad Bunny wouldn't be so bad. He'd be like a little bit of energizer buddy, you know? This commandment is addressing the name of God. Back in the day, devoted Jews wouldn't even write the name of God. They wouldn't even articulate the name of God. And now we throw it around like nothing. So God says, take this seriously because I take you seriously. Again, God never would profane your name or mine. And here we turn and do so. This commandment is about communication and speech. That's what it's about. And as I alluded to earlier, God spoke the creation into existence. He spoke it. There's power in a name. Many of us have children. We would never take our kid's name in vain.

When we say their name, it means something, doesn't it? We think about the essence of who they are. When I say the name of the Lord Jesus, I should think about he's my savior, he's my Lord, he's my master, he's my friend, he's my salvation, he's my everything. The last thing I should do is casualize or use his name in a flippant manner. Yet record numbers of us are doing it. There are a lot of different ways that we can use our name. from people who say a lot of different things these days. We can use our name in a way that we don't want to use it. And I thought I would kind of categorize, We can use our name in a way that we don't want to use it. if you don't mind, some of the swearers that I've seen in my life. Because swearers, those who use God's name in vain, or those who have a regularity, a vulgarity, they fall into three arenas, three categories. Did you know that? The first swearer is the person who is absolutely clueless. The person who is self-unaware. And we should cut them slack, because if you're a clueless swearer, you've never heard teaching like this. You don't even know what you're saying. Years ago, after a service, I walked into our lobby, and a guy walked up to me, he goes, "'Pastor, Pastor, I want to tell you, man, "'just straight up, that was a hell of a service.'"

I said, I appreciate that. This service was designed to keep you out of hell. So again, friends, we have to think and consider what we're saying. And we have to know that a lot of people that we come in contact with are absolutely clueless when it comes to their vocabulary. I would love to take some of these people, in fact, I can do that right now, I can take some of you who are in the clueless category, and what if I broke down what you're saying when you use vulgar language? And when I break this down, you're gonna realize how stupid you sound. What in the sexual intercourse are you doing? That's some crazy feces, man. I'm urinated off. Send that person to eternal punishment, God. That girl is an offspring of a female dog. You're a sexual organ. Shut the eternal separation up. It's my prayer that those who are clueless will be clued in, because the Bible tells me, and it tells you in Exodus 4, verses 11 and 12, who gives speech to mortals? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth. That's powerful, isn't it? And teach you what to speak. It's my prayer that those who are clueless,

who just throw out all of these swear words, all of these vulgarities, will be clued in, that you would realize you matter to God, that God wants to name you as a Christian, but you have an opportunity to make that decision. I think the first clueless swear I was ever around, I mean, it had to be when I was in the sixth grade. My orthodontist was named Dr. Rupert Cuny. He was a wee little man, yet he was a world-class outdoorsman. And the funny thing about him was, he was super calm. When you would ask him a question, just a simple question, he would pause for so long, you thought to yourself, did he hear what I said? And he would start speaking right when you were like, gonna say something, you know? So one day I said, Dr. Cuny, in all of your travels and in all of your excursions, have you ever been hooked before, like with a fishing hook? Have you? Yes, I have. I was fishing at Lake Murray with another doctor friend. His name was Dr. Alfred Tinko. And Dr. Tinko got excited. And he ran back with that fly rod and the damn, dang, dang D-A-N-G, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang. Gee, the dang hook caught me right in the ear. That was a blatant breakage of the third commandment by Dr. Rupert Cuny. He was a clueless cusser.

I don't know why I told you that, I just remembered that. I have some great stories about cussing. I have another great story too about a clueless cusser. Here's another great story about a clueless cusser. I was with a guy, he's a friend of mine, but he's a clueless cusser, and I was with him for a couple of days, and this guy dropped the F-bomb as good as anyone I've ever heard in my life. He used the F-bomb in all parts of speech, like I was just dumbfounded. So after two days of hearing this, I thought to myself, you know what? Today, I'm gonna F-bomb him like he has never heard in his life. So I see him in the morning, what's up, this is an F-ing beautiful day, I'm F-ing tired of it. I just, he was like, oh my gosh, Ed, what are you doing, what are you saying? I said, that is what you sound like to the ears of God. Now I know it sounds like, hey, I'm some bad guy, or mean guy, or I'm some Mr. Confrontational guy, I know this guy well enough to say that. I wouldn't say that to just anyone. You know, in my household, I have never heard my parents cuss, ever. Ever. Isn't that amazing?

It's really great. I don't know, maybe some of you grew up in homes where vulgarity, or taking the Lord's name in vain just didn't happen. And my parents truly revered and honored the name of the Lord. Jokes about Jesus, you know, the typical stupid golf course jokes I've heard a million times about Jesus playing Simon Peter, we didn't do that. I mean, you don't joke about the things of God. You don't joke about the church. You don't joke about the Holy Spirit. You don't joke about prayer, you don't. When you do that, you, my friend, are taking the third commandment and breaking it. Also too, we have a lot of Christians in our culture who say, hey, God told me, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa. Really? And they'll say that to leverage God to use God for their crazy behavior. That, my friend, is coming dangerously close to the warning track of breaking the third commandment. So yeah, we can talk about words all day and night, but we also can break the third commandment by the way we walk, by our lifestyle, by your hypocrisy in mind. Let's go back to the swears, because we're having fun now, aren't we, in this positive message?

So basically, God's saying misusing my name is serious business. Some who are clueless, you need to be clued in to the grace and the mercy and the power of God. You need to know Jesus Christ personally and truly take a sinventory of your life and realize that Jesus took care of those sins. He died, He took those sins upon Himself. He was in the grave for three days, rose again, and He's offering you this new life. The name of Jesus, that's what Jesus did, and He wants to name you as a Christian. He wants your name to be in the Lamb's book of life. Proverbs 18, 20 through 21, from the fruit of His mouth, a man's stomach is filled with the harvest from His lips. He is satisfied. Well, Ed, it just slipped out. Ha ha, sorry, man. Hey, pardon my French. You know, that's just the way I talk. I was brought up that way, man. I'm just around it all the time. I don't even know what I'm... That's the next area, the next swear I want to talk about. It's the wheels-off swear. The wheels are on the car for a while. Vroom, vroom. But someone disagrees with you.

Someone confronts you. Someone says something you didn't like. The wheels are off. Blah, blah, blah. Yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee, yee! Sound familiar? You don't want to say this stuff. You know it's a sin before God. You know you have this vulgarity issue, this problem with cussing, swearing, you know it. But it just, your temper gets the best of you, or situations just lead to frustration, and then you have the consternation which leads into cursing. James chapter three, the half-brother of Jesus wrote the book of James, James three, verses nine through 10. With the tongue, we praise, wheels on, our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse, wheels off, men who've been made in God's likeness, out of the same mouth. Is this convicting? Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this shouldn't be. So if you want to alliterate this outline, if you want to alliterate the cussers, you got the clueless, the capricious, and you have the callous swearer. But let's keep with category two just for one second. If you are a capricious cusser, many of you are,

what do you do about it? Well, the Bible tells us in Romans chapter 12, verse two, that we could be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So it's a mind issue. And please don't take this message out of context. This message is not, don't cuss. If you think that's this message, you're totally missing it. This is a heart issue. We're gonna discover as we continue out of the heart, out of our heart, so it's a transformation in our hearts, our minds, our souls, our spirits that can help us with this regard. And obviously God forgives and he's a God of grace and mercy, but God wants us, you and me, to honor him. The tongue is funny though, when you think about it, it's petite and powerful. It's just a five ounce slab of membrane, I think. But man, a tongue is powerful, isn't it? It's just, it's unbelievable. I think it's ironic. You never hear someone say, Buddha damn, oh Allah. Thought I'd throw that in. You know why you don't hear that? Because they're not God. They're not, there's only one God. Now, if a lot of us got serious about the third commandment, we would have long periods of silence in our lives. We'd be like.

You know, the wheels off, swear, something difficult happens. Someone gets in your grill. You hit your thumb with a hammer. The third swearer is gonna be that callous person, that arrogant person, that prideful person. Have you ever wondered why people take God's name in vain? And I'm talking to category three now. Have you ever wondered that? I mean, why do we take God's name in vain? I'll tell you why. We're saying, I'm not afraid of God. I'm the man. I'm the woman. And we use language to try to be powerful and to try to manipulate, intimidate, and shock people and emphasize our points, which we can do it in so many other ways, other godly ways. The Bible says, though, that there are a lot of people, and we have them at Fellowship Church, who are unsaved. You're not a believer. You would be in category three. Shaking your puny fist in the face of our creator. and saying, you know what I'm gonna say? What I'm going to say. For example, you might say God damn it a lot. When you say God damn it, you're telling God to do something he doesn't do. Where in the Bible does God damn anyone to hell?

It's not in there, friends. We make that choice. If you say damn, again, you're declaring something that God doesn't do. And you're gonna say, what the hell? You're gonna really make light of eternal punishment? Because if you really think about it, those of us who are believers, we have people we've known who are probably in hell. And if you continue in category three, you're going to go to that place you talk about so much. And we don't want you to do that. We want to have a population explosion in heaven. So we're gonna depopulate hell and populate heaven. And one of the ways we do this is to understand, if we just understand the name of God, the name of Jesus, the geological plates of our lives will change. You know, for the last several days, Lisa and I took our kids away as we remembered and honored our oldest child, Lee Beth, who died suddenly five years ago due to alcohol and drugs. She moved from this life to the next. After Lee Beth died, even today, there are certain things that sort of trigger emotions deep within me. Like when I see someone giving someone CPR, even sometimes if I hear the siren of an ambulance, if I'm watching a show and I see someone really struggling with alcohol or drugs, if I hear someone say, yeah, I was partying and I was passed out,

all those things bring back deep and dark memories. I think about the recovery program at Fellowship Church. We have so many who are in the recovery program and I guarantee it when people say, you know, talk about being drunk or you need to have a drink or Margaritaville or whatever, you know, that sounds funny or hip and all that, but if you're a recovering alcoholic, it doesn't. Those words are deep. They mean something to you. They hurt literally your heart. We have a lot of young families in our church and then we have a lot of young couples who are going through the dark time of infertility. And I know too, when you hear about someone saying, yeah, we just have to, you know, go on a vacation for two days and she's pregnant and, you know, fertile, myrtle and all those things, those words hurt the heart of those experiencing infertility. But what I've just described to you, it's just a microcosm of what God feels and what He experiences when we use His name in a flippant or frivolous manner. I mean, God's looking at us thinking, I'm their creator. I'm their Lord. I sent my only son to secure their salvation. I've sent the Holy Spirit to move and convict and to fill them and they're saying that? Really?

Matthew 15, 18, but the things that come out of the mouth, Jesus said this, come from where? The heart. Anytime you go see a doctor, the first things they do, they're gonna look at your heart. No matter if you have an ingrown toenail, the doctors will look at your heart in our great position and they're gonna say, look at your heart in our great position. is the same way. So let me emphasize again, not only do we violate this third commandment by our words, through our words, these categories that I mentioned, but we can also profane the name of the Lord by our lifestyle. So what do we do about this commandment? I mean, what do we do about this situation? This swear-a-thon that our culture is involved with. Well, we need to think about any word, any place, anything we do, does that dishonor God's name? Any word, any place, anything, does it dishonor God's name? Also, another suggestion, talk about it. Talk about your language. Talk about it with your spouse. Talk about it to a Christian friend. Talk about it to a counselor. Why do I do that?

How can you know that? And then also to, I think, to constantly critique your language from the jokes, to the words, to the stories, to everything. I think surrounding yourself with the right, with the right music, the right podcasts, the right entertainment choices, all of those things, all of those things, gang, matter to God, and they should matter to us. So words can steer the course of our lives, but they also can take our lives off course. Okay. So someone slides into a coffee shop. It's not you, but someone else. And they're sipping their favorite latte, and they overhear a conversation that you're having. What conclusions do they come to about you? Let's prowl for prayer. God, thank you for the gift of technology to be able to come into people's homes and apartments and other places and spaces to share your word. God, forgive me when I have turned my back on this commandment, when I have used your name the way I shouldn't have, for my language. And I turn from that, Father, and I pray that that's the prayer

of every single person here, no matter if you find yourself category one, category two, or category three. If you're in category one, there's a great chance you're not a believer. Category two would be those who are probably Christians. But category three would be someone who is unsaved. So it's my prayer that the clueless would be clued in, that those who have the wheels-off vibe would put the wheels back on, and the arrogant would become humble. And you can humble yourself today before the mighty hand of God, before the name of Jesus, and simply say, if you want him to name you and to put your name in the Lamb's book of life, the name that's gonna bring eternity for all, just pray this prayer with me. Just say, Jesus, I admit to you that I am a sinner. I've sinned in so many different ways, and today I'm just reminded how I've sinned with my tongue. I turn from my sins, and I turn to you, Jesus. I believe you died on the cross for my sins and rose again, and right now I ask you to come into my life. I give you all that I am and all that I'll ever be. In Christ's name we pray, amen.