Irreverent Consequences (Rewind)
You shall not take the name Yahweh your God in vain. Exodus20:7a World
English Bible
In vain – The second commandment is the reverence commandment. It demands that we treat God’s name with respect. As we discovered, that means we speak as men and women under His authority. Our words must reflect His character because words have power.
The world has a different view of respect. In the kingdom of this age, we are taught to respect force. In our world, words mean nothing in front of a gun. It is brute strength that really commands fear. So we exhibit our muscle in “shock and awe.” We bow to the machine. We reverence technology instead of people. We are witnessing a systematic undermining of the power of words as the world disconnects itself from truth. Illegal becomes undocumented. Criminal becomes victim. Genocide becomes cleansing. Hate becomes mental disorder. Faith becomes fable. And God, well, that’s just whatever you imagine to be your spiritual source.
There are consequences for this deliberate decline. When you no longer revere God, why would you have a second thought about what God creates? It’s easy to despoil a world that exists by accident. It’s not unreasonable to disregard creatures who are just one step above apes. Who could have imagined that breaking the second commandment would show up in our judicial practice or our education or our environmental policies? But there it is. Disrespecting the Creator, we desecrated the creation. Now what do you think about blasphemy?
Do you blaspheme God when you spout hatred for another human being?
Do you blaspheme God when you exploit people and things for your own gain?
Do you blaspheme God when you rewrite His laws of punishment?
Do you blaspheme God when you use evolutionary theory to justify moral turpitude?
Only men and women who deny authority could participate in such insults, and yet, the evidence is obvious. Every day we see more and more license in the name of freedom (another word redefined).
Obeying the second commandment begins with a servant’s attitude—humility, awe, respect and, yes, dread. God is to be feared for He does not forget those who have spurned His authority. And it’s not just about words.
Topical Index: second commandment, words, power, Exodus 20:7a
People have mistaken this slippery slope for a ski run and are happily sliding into hell…and are upset with you if you don’t score them a perfect 10!
Michael, your words make the point with precision!
Do you blaspheme God when you use evolutionary theory to justify moral turpitude? Interesting from the weekend.
The Bible wins again:
These findings are more like an atomic bomb going off under the hoax of Darwinian evolution. This study, interestingly enough, was prompted by a handheld genetic test which is used to bust sushi bars trying to pass off tilapia for tuna.
The first nuclear bombshell is – get ready for this – that virtually all living things came into being at about the same time.
“The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
That sets the stage for the second utterly revolutionary pull quote from the article. “And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.” In other words, the reason that no transitional forms have ever been found is quite simple: there aren’t any.
Caution: I’m not promoting this, because the source (internet) is not reliable.
Thank you, John!
I read the book After The Flood by Bill Cooper periodically. He spent decades painstakingly going through source material about the Table of Nations in Gen, 10,11 and found ALL the names independently verified, but he found so much more. I know I have written about this before, so please forgive me, but it is just so much fun!
I suspect the famous “king lists” of the royal families of Europe may be the best documentation of the accuracy of the Genesis account that we have. I think they trump even archaeology, because ALL those pagans (who were either hostile to each other or didn’t even know of the existence of each other) nursed the lists of their royal pedigrees back to Noah, and a few all the way back to Adam. These lists compare with each other like a hand in a glove. The charges that they were compiled by “pious forging monks” is soundly and scientifically refuted by Cooper, too.
Did you know that the Britons hale from their first king, Brutus, who escaped with his followers from the fall of Troy? Or that his brother stayed behind to build Rome? no wonder Julius Ceasar found Britain so congenial! Did you know that the Scots claim that they were Scythians? Or that the god Jove was, according to those king lists, actually Japheth? But if you go look at the Mayan calendar (which had to be thoroughly denounced, too) they agree exactly with the day count in Genesis, too. Coincidence? Well, maybe monkeys pounding away on typewriters….
Guess why these wildly popular and extremely ancient documents had to be soundly denounced and buried about a couple hundred years ago?
Ohhhh! So this DOESN’T just mean don’t say the name “Jesus Christ” in anger. Well, being that Messiah’s name is not Jesus Christ, can we? Or, otherwise, can we say “HaShem” in anger?
And finally SOMEONE is talking a little bit about some of what this instruction means and a little bit about some of the implications of not obeying it. Nevertheless, I say, let’s talk A LOT MORE about what it means and the implications for both not obeying it AND obeying it. This is such a neglected instruction of all the many instructions of YHVH, if even any His the instructions are preached from the Christian pulpits.
(But, as an aside and not to distract from this main theme here, I have this much lesser question. If this is the second commandment and not the third, how does one come up with “the 10 commandments”?)
The Catholic version has it as the second, as do possibly other renditions. One can find several different breakdowns of the ten words. Distracted. 🙂 I do agree more focus on these instructions are needed, certainly in my life. I agree that misunderstanding of this issue has created illegitimate word usage and cultural taboos that clearly don’t fit a biblical narrative. Traditions have overpowered biblical text in this and many other instances. We are agast when someone utters “G–D—!” yet only sniffle at the observations Skip has pointed out. We have become a preverted illiterate version of the spectators engrossed in the Roman colosseum attrocities feigning moral concern about words that are redifined according to one’s own choosing. We are certainly dumbed down and continuing in the downward fall. It’s just too difficult to think for so many. It requires too many brain cells and too much moral expense.
True that!
If you count the actual sentences of the commandments in Hebrew, you don’t even get 9. But tradition prevails.
I don’t understand why there is an instruction to not make any graven images AND then one to not bow down to and worship them, unless it is really only about not bowing down to and worshiping graven images. Why give an instruction to not bow down and serve them if you’re not even suppose to make them in the first place? It seems to me there only needs to be one or the other. But, otherwise, I see 10, because, re: 1 and 2, man can have other gods without having graven images. Right?
So there’s 1) no other gods and 2) no graven images (or no graven images that you bow down to and worship – and this instruction needs to be clarified because otherwise, maybe there’d be no “art” allowed), 3) don’t take His name in vain, 4) keep Shabbat, and then the rest, the other 6, which are clearly distinct from each other.
If you can get to an interlinear bible, (though not all of them show the “extra” letters) there’s something interesting to consider. There’s an additional “letter” following each of the “orders” (dabrim, as in to put in order). There are ten additional letters and they follow every command except in the case of the first where it proceeds it. In “a” rendering, that would make the first 2 part and parcel of each other as the whole paragraph is bracketed. The “letters are either a “pey” or a “samech”. The other option is that the words translated as, “and spoke (dabar) Elohim the whole of these words saying” is actually a command (order) and is consistent with the rest. (that’s actually possible as, they’re not commands but rather orderings) But here’s something to look at if you are intrigued, Samech, is a support and speaks of solidity and structural intergrity (immoveable), the Pey is a picture of the mouth forming words, or the words that come out and it’s “flexable” or open, in other words the “end result isn’t “set in stone”, so to speak. (The days in the creation account in Gen. 1 are all followed by a pey) So consider that the first 2 are bracketed by a samech, before and after. The third (God’s name in vain) is followed by a pey. (He will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain, what’s the end “result” of doing that) The rest are all followed by a samech except for the last one (coveting your neighbors stuff) which ends with a pey. Have some fun and explore that one.
All THAT being said, I’m not so sure the breakdown is as important as the structure it’s placed in even though they are referred to as “the ten”, and to add to that, the relevance of the number 10 as it’s used in scripture towards speaking of a “wholeness or fullness” and regarding mans work. As the teacher said, the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep His commands.
Thanks.
And yet in Ex.34:28 they are rendered as the 10 “commands.” (that which was written on the replacement tablets)
Yes you can kill a person, blaspheme God, with words just as you kill with a gun, and maybe words are worse as they live forever in one’s mind if not apologized for and forgiven.
“God is to be feared for He does not forget those who have spurned His authority”. Hmm.. He doesn’t forget – he forgives!!!!….. “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” Psalm 130:4