Fatherhood champion, Anthony Bradley, in his Fathers’ Day blog last week argued fathers are the most important men in any community, anywhere, everywhere, ever. He then supported his claim with data proving the profound difference fathers make in a child’s healthy development.
- Emotional Support: Children with engaged fathers exhibit better emotional regulation and are less likely to experience depression and anxiety.
- Academic Success: Fathers who are actively involved in their children's education see their children achieve higher grades, performing better in school.
- Behavioral Impact: The presence of a father or father figure significantly reduces the likelihood of children engaging in delinquent behavior or substance abuse.
- Social Development: When fathers are engaged with their children, the children develop stronger social skills, which are crucial for forming healthy relationships in the future.
- Spiritual Formation: The greatest predictor of faith persistence from childhood into adulthood is the nature of a child's relationship with his father.
Such research validates God’s creation design for fatherhood, which is our topic of study as we celebrate National Fatherhood Month, with the 5-week series Fathers Giving the Moral Foundation to Their Children That the Culture Won’t. We’ve been looking at the summary of God’s moral law inscribed by his very finger, called the Ten Commandments. In this episode, we examine the third commandment: 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 (Ex 20:7). I must confess, as a kid there was much that I didn’t understand about the Ten Commandments, like what adult--ery was. I knew adults were grownups but the ery? I also wondered why, of all the bad things you could do, God made number three, “don’t cuss,” before murdering or stealing. My hope is that by the end of this episode we will see that the third commandment teaches a bit more than “don’t cuss;” it links our love for God to a deeply held passion to see his name honored, a truth that can make a huge difference in our child’s heart.
As we have considered the vital responsibility of building God’s moral foundation into the hearts of our kids and grandkids, we noted that in this endeavor as in almost every endeavor of life, we won’t succeed without a plan. An over-all plan identifies the objectives—the steps we need to take—to build this strong moral foundation. In the first episode of this series (#22 on June 2), I proposed such a plan: Master Plan Objectives for Instilling Biblical Moral Values. Let’s take a few moments to review.
1. Get a biblical overview of this process. (We looked at overview training principles from Ephesians 6:4 and Deuteronomy 6:4-8.)
2. Answer worldview questions.
- ME Questions: Why do I matter? Where did I come from? Where should I be going to fulfill my purpose? What is the origin of my sense of right/wrong?
- WORLD Questions: What's wrong with the world? How did it get this way? What's the solution? (We saw many answered in New City Catechism).
3. Teach Jesus’ summary of biblical commandments—love God and love neighbor.
4. Teach God’s moral law: The Ten Commandments (covered in New City Catechism).
5. Practice biblical principles for the proper discipline of a child to teach self-mastery for obedience to the moral law.
6. Teach and inspire godly attitudes. We noted that character is a consistent attitude. (Past podcasts covered the beatitudes and golden virtues of 2 Peter 1.)
7. Help them celebrate God’s glorious design of manhood and womanhood differently to complete one another. (See numerous previous podcasts.)
8. Build the life-long discipline of intercessory prayer for your wife, kids, and grandkids (Ex 17, Eph 6).
-----------------------------------------Pre to Early Teen Years---------------------------------
9. Teach God’s glorious design of sex. (See YouTube video Biblical Worldview of Sexuality)
10. Help build a strong self-image, knowing they are perfectly designed for their mission. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:10).
11. Teach them how to cope with peer pressure and to choose friends wisely.
12. Inspire them to pursue wisdom. When I was a son with my father, he taught me and said to me, the beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you (Prov 4:3ff)
13 Expose them to portraits of Jesus in the gospels to show that he is a leader worthy of their whole-hearted allegiance. Preteens look for heroes to follow.
---------------------------------------------Teen Years----------------------------------------------
(My research revealed a strong correlation between kids who leave home and renounce their faith or join the false religion Progressive Christianity, and a failure of parents to prepare them for the anti-biblical messages that flood social media.)
14. Ground them in sound logic, learning to recognize logical fallacies.
15. Thoroughly teach them the reasons for our faith (I Pet 3:15 apologia). Faith and reason are NOT opposites; the Christian faith is built upon sound reason. My heart cannot embrace what my mind rejects.
16. Equip them to understand the case for the culture’s most current anti-biblical worldviews, refusing to build a straw man. Then refute it with Scripture.
This plan may feel overwhelming—but it is an 18-year plan! Every faithful father needs a target on the wall—a curriculum he wants to impart to his child before she leaves home. This month our focus has been on objectives 1-4, which are to ground our children in an understanding of God’s moral law. Most Christian’s are familiar with Jesus’ summary of the moral law in the two love commandments. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Mt 22:36-40).
Sometimes we think Jesus is teaching something radically new in these words. But this summary of the law is not new. The first table of the law—the first 4 commandments have always been about LOVING GOD. #1) You are to keep me first in your affections, #2) You are to worship me for who I truly am as revealed in Scripture not as a figment of your imagination, #3) You are to love me so much that you passionately want my name to never be disrespected but honored, #4) You are to set apart time in your weekly schedule for communing with me. The second table of the law, verses 5-10, have always been about LOVIMG OUR NEIGHBOR—our horizontal obligations to each other: honor your father and mother, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet what your neighbor has. This month we’re only covering the first table of the law. So, we come to the third commandment, understanding that it is given to us as the proper way to express our love for God—respect God’s name. Exodus 20:7: 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.
Names matter. Parents give a lot of thought to the name they choose for their newborn. Our own name has the power to inspire us or demoralize us. The latter was the case for a boy named Clayton who overheard his uncle say to his father about him, “Clay is dirt and that is what your son is, worthless dirt; he’ll never amount to anything.” This crushing view of him became Clayton’s self-image and sabotaged nearly every positive achievement of his life. Names matter. And they especially matter to God. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter, and Saul to Paul. God is precise in telling Joseph, the husband of Mary, to name her son Jesus, YASHUA, which means “salvation is from Yahweh,” because in the angel’s words, “He will save his people from their sins.” The name of a person is so closely linked to the person bearing it that to dishonor the name is to dishonor the person and to honor the name is to honor the person. We read of Christ, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11). To treat one’s name with respect is to treat the person with respect. In this commandment, God says, “If you love me, show it in the way you treat my name.”
Four Ways God Says Loving Him Should Change How We Treat His Name
(The Third Commandment Applied)
A. Don’t disrespect God’s name by using it as profanity. Have you ever asked yourself, “why would anyone use God’s name as a curse word?” Most sins are understandable to some degree. You steal to get something you don’t have but want. You commit adultery because the thrill of romance has left your marriage. But what possible benefit is there to using God’s name as a curse word? As one author put it, “Using God’s name to curse extends no man’s reputation. It increases no man’s fortune. It satisfies no man’s passion.” Perhaps such profanity is thoughtless learned behavior. Yet this author discerns, “When a man continues to profane God’s name, what he is saying is: “God doesn’t scare me. I don’t care about him or his laws or his threats.” It is an expression of intentional disrespect. And such disrespect does not go unnoticed by God, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
The New City Catechism, as we have seen, is a valuable teaching aid for building a moral foundation into our children. Question 9 covers the first three commandments. What does God require in the first, second, and third commandments? First, that we know God as the only true God. Second, that we avoid all idolatry. Third, that we treat God’s name with fear and reverence. Here is another example of how the curriculum sold with it can help your teaching.
Activity: Print out each word of the first three commandments on individual sheets and put each word in an envelope. Hide the envelope for the children to find. Instruct the children to search for the envelope, encourage them to open it, and then begin to work together to put the words of each commandment in the correct order. This could be easier for younger children by printing each commandment on a specific color of paper. Read them aloud to refresh their memories. The first three commandments all address the relationship between God and his people. (New City Catechism Curriculum Vol 1 Leaders Guide.)
B. The second way God says we are to treat his name is this: Don’t make a vow using God’s name and fail to keep it. The ESV text notes say that take the name refers to “taking an oath,” i.e. making a promise and attaching God’s name to it. “In vain” refers to then failing to keep the promise. It showed a profound lack of respect for God to vow to do something in his name and not do it. It might be worth thinking back to some of the words in vows many of us have made to God:
- In your marriage—do you pledge your faithfulness to her in all love and honor, in all duty and service, in all faith and tenderness, to live with her and cherish her…
- In church membership—do you pledge to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?
- In the baptism or dedication of your child—do you pledge that you will endeavor to set before (him) a godly example. That you will pray with him and for him, that you will teach him the doctrines of our holy religion, and that you will strive to bring (him) up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord…
The third commandment is not the only place where we are told that God takes vows to him seriously. In Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 we read, When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.
Jesus goes beyond the demand that any vows invoking God’s name must be paid. As he did with the other commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expounds one of the principles behind this commandment.
Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No” (Mt 5:33-37).
On the surface, Jesus seems to forbid the taking of any vows. But in Jesus’ day, the scribes and Pharisees, in their typical legalistic way, had twisted the third commandment’s teaching around. The twisted logic went this way. If a vow made in God’s name must be paid, then a vow NOT made in God’s name does NOT have to be paid. So, they invented a perverse category of things to swear by that indicated the probability that you would keep your word:
- If a person swears in God’s name—you know he’ll keep his promise.
- If he swears by heaven, he’ll probably keep his word.
- If he swears by earth, it’s not too likely he will keep his promise
- If a person swears by Jerusalem, it’s pretty likely he’ll keep his promise
- If one swears by his own head, there’s not much chance he’ll keep his promise.
And Jesus says, let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no. Keep your promises!
One group that needs to hear this admonition is fathers. A leader of men’s ministry was doing some research. He gathered a group of thirty teenagers and asked, “How many of you can remember specific promises your dad made to you but didn’t keep?” Every hand in the room shot up.
C. A third way that loving God should change the way we treat his name is this: Make asking for God’s name to be honored central to your prayer life. When Jesus was asked to share his prayer life with his disciples, they found out that one of the consuming passions of Jesus’ life was to see the name of the Father honored. In fact, it was for God’s name to be honored that was the very first thing Jesus taught his disciples to pray. “Our father in heaven, may your name be hallowed. The word hallowed is rarely used today but brings to my mind Abraham Lincoln’s famous words to dedicate the national cemetery in Gettysburg.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
The word translated hallowed is HAGIASTHETW--from HAGIOS, holy, so it means to make holy, consecrate, to set apart. Jesus teaches us to begin our daily prayer, “Heavenly Father, may your name be set apart, honored, greatly respected, venerated, esteemed as no other.” Sometimes, names are associated with greatness. Mayo Clinic. Lenox china. Mercedes Benz. The first petition of the Lord’s prayer is asking that God’s name would be associated with moral greatness, that it be highly respected, revered. So, our daily prayer should begin by asking, “how can I honor you today at work, by my attitudes all through the day, by the way I love my wife and kids, by the way I love my neighbor, by the way I use my free time?” When you love someone, you want his name to be esteemed. Christians are not only commanded to not misuse the name of God but to yearn and pray for God’s name to be hallowed, honored, and exalted.
D. There is a fourth way that loving God affects the way you treat his name: You never get over the unspeakable honor it is to have Christ’s name entrusted to us. For if you are a follower of Christ, you are called a Christian, i.e. a Christ-one. Our Lord has entrusted his name, his reputation, the honor due his name, to you and me. We are his ambassadors. Christ’s name can either be lifted up and exalted by the way Christians live or dragged through the mud. One day a Christian woman was having her quiet time and read from Matthew 5, “If your brother has something against you—go, make peace with your brother. Then come and offer your gift.” She asked God to search her heart to see if anyone fit this category and she thought of her harsh, angry words, spoken in a conflict with her neighbor a few months earlier. The problem was, her neighbor had moved, and she had no way to reach the neighbor. But just a few days later she happened to run into that neighbor at the grocery store. She confessed her wrong and asked for the neighbor’s forgiveness. The neighbor began to cry. She said, “I found out just a few weeks ago that I have very advanced terminal cancer. I have only a few weeks left. You were my last hope that Christianity was real. After you hurt me so badly, I gave up on Christianity. Now, I see it is real. Can you show me how to become a Christian?” Christ has entrusted his name—his reputation to us. What an awesome PRIVILEGE and RESPONSIBILITY it is to represent him to the world.
But even as we grasp that the extreme honor of bearing Christ’s name requires setting a high bar, we must remember something else about his name; even when we drag it through the mud, he never takes his name back from us. I’m reminded of the story of a young, cowardly soldier who had fled from battle who was brought before his general, Alexander the Great. This mighty commander of men was tender with the young soldier until he asked the soldier his name. The soldier answered, “Alexander.” At that point, the great general became filled with anger and shouted to the soldier, “Young man, either go into battle with courage or CHANGE YOUR NAME.” How merciful of Jesus that no matter how many times we fail him, he never demands to change our name. We remain his: Christ-ones. No matter how many times we drag his reputation through the mud, when we fail to revere and respect his name as he deserves—there is still forgiveness in him. For, there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). May our passion to see that name honored burn brightly!
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- It seems like having a plan for building a strong moral foundation into our children with the help of the Holy Spirit is OBVIOUS. Why do you think so many Christian fathers don’t have one? How can you help that change?
- What thoughts stood out to you about teaching children to not misuse God’s name?
- What thoughts stood out to you about beginning our prayer by asking that God’s name would be hallowed? Why might Jesus say to start this way?
- How can the thought that Christ has given us his name, fire a hotter passion to please him?
