The Seriousnes of Blasphemy

You can remain standing for the Word of God, Exodus chapter 20, verse 7. You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. So that was the reading of the third commandment. You may be seated. We are starting a new commandment. A new commandment to us.

The eternal commandment. God's name has always been holy. I find that one of the best helps to understanding the scripture in general, but in particular these commandments has been, could you bring my water up here please? I think I forgot it. Thank you. Has been looking at the catechisms, where the catechisms ask about the commandments and then they answer the question.

And I find it to be very helpful. So I'm going to read to you. Thank you. I'm going to read to you from the Heidelberg Catechism. What is required in the Third Commandment is the question. The answer, that we must not by cursing or by false swearing, nor yet by unnecessary oaths profane or abuse the name of God.

Just so you know, it sounds sort of easy and doable so far. The next part is going to stay. Nor even by our silence and connivance be partakers of these horrible sins in others. that's a little tougher. And in summary, that we use the holy name of God in no other way than with fear and reverence so that he may be rightly confessed and worshipped by us and be glorified in all our words and works.

I'll remind you as I read from the Catechism and as we even go through this third commandment, that the first couple of sermons in this series about the Ten Commandments, we focused on the fact that the Ten Commandments apply to our lives today. So this is one of the ones where we would say, well, it's not that serious anymore is what people want to say. So I want to remind you of that.

The next question, is the profaning of God's name by swearing and cursing so grievous a sin that his wrath is kindled against those also who do not help as much as they can to hinder and forbid it? The answer is yes, truly. For no sin is greater and more provoking to God than the profaning of his name, wherefore he even commanded it to be punished with death.

That'll actually be the focus of our sermon today. But may we swear reverently by the name of God? And the answer is yes, when it's required by the magistrate or the government or when it may be needful otherwise to maintain and promote fidelity and truth to the glory of God and our neighbor's good. For such an oath is grounded in God's word and therefore was rightly used by the saints in the Old and New Testaments.

So it is possible to use God's name in a right way. that we're not superstitious like the Jews were who changed his name as written in the Bible to say Lord instead, which is why your whole Old Testament says capital L-O-R-D, Lord, in all caps to represent God's name because they were afraid to say his name at all. The Baptist Catechism, which accompanies our confession nicely, says what is required in the Third Commandment? Now, for those of you who think the third commandment just means I can't say OMG, the third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works.

What is forbidden in the third commandment? And the third commandment forbids all profaning and abusing of anything whereby God makes himself known. And there's a little bit more we'll go over in the next several weeks, however long it takes us. But the third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works.

You know, it's interesting to think about the implications of some of these. And I'm going to try to get into those eventually. Today I won't do very many, but because your sin comes from your heart, I can't give you a list of words you can say and words you can't say, and I can't give you a list of names of God and attributes of God that you need to be careful about with your problems in your heart if you're a blasphemer in the first place.

But if we're going to take seriously what the Catechism says, I have an example for you. I saw a couple of memes that someone made this week, and the memes were people took Scripture and they were trying to mock something, and they were making the Scripture say something the scripture didn't really say to mock people that are saying that the scripture says something it doesn say And it was interesting because as I read them I was very provoked in my own spirit that I just thought it was a misuse of Scripture And I think we can discuss these things I think we have to be careful about it but if you're going to take Scripture even, according to this, and just make it say something different, even if it's to mock a legitimately bad idea, I think you have to be extremely careful, because this is God's thing, whereby he makes himself known. And it's not for your use to use how you want it.

Another example, God is just. In fact, because God is just, his name is synonymous with the word justice. So I'll go ahead and go out on a limb and say that if you've invented something you call social justice, that you're a blasphemer by the very nature of the fact that you've taken something that's God. And you've equated with God's name. and you have now made it something that is not.

And so if you're... I would... I'll say this, though. I venture to guess that we're all guilty of far more blasphemies than we realize. So let's look at Leviticus 24. So this is where we will spend a big portion By big portion, I, as usual, have no idea what I mean by that.

I forgot to bring my recorder, so I don't even have a timer in front of me. So if it starts to get too long, just somebody raise your hand and flag me down. Otherwise, we're just going to go until... I hope the spirit leads me to stop. So the kid's eyes are real big, like, wait a second. He doesn't know how long it's going to be.

Sorry, kids. I'll just say, I don't want to joke around the pulpit, but that's one of the greatest things about knowing that you're all just going to stay here for dinner after. It doesn't really matter how long I speak. You don't have any place else to be. I know that. But I didn't intend to go long because of our meeting.

Let's look through this Leviticus passage, and then I'll give you some comments on it. And there's a lot that could be said about this passage. If we were going verse by verse, this would be a number of different sermons about different topics. This is really a topical sermon in a sense about blasphemy. And specifically, this week, my goal is not to tell you what are all the bad words that you can't say or what are all the tones of voice you can't use when saying God's name.

This week is intended just to show you the severity of blasphemy. that you may even just tremble in fear before God. And come back next week so you can find out how you can obey the command. So I'm not going to help you with that one this week. I tell you, it's quite simply, if you want to obey the command, just shut your mouth. And that'll help, but we're all blasphemers in our heart.

And so it won't solve your problem anyway. But it might reduce the number of times you say something careless or idle. Leviticus 24, verse 10. All right, sandwiched in between a section about the showbread and the lamps in the temple and then in the tabernacle and then some laws at the end. So verse 10, now an Israelite woman's son whose father was an Egyptian, okay?

So they just left Egypt. Moses had led the people out of Egypt, right? So if you're doing your math here in geography, this is not a long time. In fact, I was trying to figure this out when I was studying this. You know, when we read the Bible, we read Exodus, and then we think Exodus is done, and then we read Leviticus. But legitimately speaking, Leviticus is simply more of a fleshed-out version of a lot of what's in Exodus.

It's happening at the same time. So it's not like this is way later. This is, in a lot of cases, it's just case law for the laws that were provided to the people in Exodus. So this is, you know, recently after the Exodus. They've got this kid. His father was an Egyptian.

He went out among the people of Israel. The Israelite woman's son and a man of Israel fought in the camp. And the Israelite woman's son blasphemed the name and cursed. Then they brought him to Moses. His mother's name was Shalometh, the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. And they put him in custody till the will of Yahweh should be clear to them.

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who hurt him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him. in case you don't know this stoning results in your death but it's kind of a slow death where you're pelted with rocks until you're finally dead and speak to the people of Israel saying whoever curses his God shall bear his sin whoever blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death All the congregation shall stone him, the sojourner as well as the native. When he blasphemes the name, it shall be put to death. Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.

Whoever takes an animal's life shall make it good, life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor as he has done, it shall be done to him. fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native for I am Yahweh your God So Moses spoke to the people of Israel and they brought out of the camp the one who had cursed and stoned him with stones.

Thus the people of Israel did as Yahweh commanded Moses. That was Leviticus 24. 10 to 23. So let's look at it. Verse 10, an Israelite woman's son whose father was an Egyptian. So you have this woman who, when she was a slave in Egypt, somehow had a son with an Egyptian man.

There are a bunch of theories about who this guy was. and there are so many different theories from people we consider like good commentators on the bible that what's clear is that we really don't know like the author of hebrews is probably more obvious to us than who this egyptian uh guy's kid was or whatever okay so we don't know if the Egyptian dad was married to the woman. We don't know if he was with the Israelites and he maybe even sold himself into slavery to be with her. We don't know if, I know he could have raped her.

We really don't know. People have all sorts of theories, and it's kind of neat when you start studying what other people have written, how often somebody He gives you some theory that they really have no real explanation for. And so you have to be careful when you repeat things that you hear. When you repeat something I say, which I hope you would. I hope you're listening and I say good things.

But you have to be careful that you don't just be someone that goes out and echoes what you've heard. Because what you'll eventually do is you'll spread a false report. If you keep reading, that's actually a really bad thing in the next chapter of Leviticus. and so you want to be able to figure things out but the Israelites left Egypt and this kid goes with his mom so either the dad didn't come or the dad was dead or whatever reason so one of the theories is that the dad of this kid was the Egyptian that Moses killed so if everybody remembers Moses killed a guy earlier in Exodus and I thought oh that's like the neatest theory and I was talking to Jason about it even yesterday.

Like, yeah, you know, maybe the kid was mad at Moses. And then I thought about it. I'm like, wait a second. Moses killed that guy over 40 years before the Exodus. But legitimate people have written this. Like, this is most likely who the guy was.

And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, this doesn't read like an old, old Israeli woman's son whose father was an Egyptian. and said, this reads like maybe a young boy, probably a teenage boy or something, right? Once a guy's in his 40s, you hardly think of him if I identify with his mother, right? And so I would guess it wasn't the guy that Moses has killed his son.

But the point is, is that this person identified with the Israelites, but also wasn't a true Israelite in one sense or another. So one of the things that I thought, I think it was John Calvin, that brought out of this is, look, this law about blasphemy is not just a law for the people of God. These laws are perpetual and binding upon all peoples everywhere.

It's one of the reasons why in the catechism that we read, we have an obligation to even stand up against blasphemy in others. And I don't do that often enough. You hear so much of it, you think, well, I could probably not do anything else but correct people's blasphemies, and I'd be a pretty busy guy. So I know that there's a limit to what we can fight, but I do fear that sometimes we are a little overly tolerant of it.

Maybe in some of your close friends. Maybe some of you have some non-believing friends, and you're afraid to just say, hey, could you just not use God's name in vain around me? Maybe some of you are paying to watch media that blasphemes God's name repeatedly. And you sit there and you just allow it. And you fund the people that create these types of things.

So there's things to think about. I'm not going to tell you you can't see a movie where somebody did something wrong. I know that there's people that try to live that way. but it's things to think about in your own spirit is what are you tolerating but so this israelite woman's son he's unnamed they fought in the camp it actually gives us the name of the mom it says that her son blasphemed the name so this guy committed a blasphemy it's not specifically said what he said it doesn't tell us here's the words he used it just says he blaspheme the name and cursed.

And so you guys can imagine the type of thing that happens. You're getting in a fight, you get angry, and somebody just, they drop a curse, right? They just might say God's name in vain. A lot of people, instead of saying a four-letter profane word, we call it, instead they use God's name. And they know who they are, and you know who they are. Because you have never once been anywhere where a person stubbed their toe and they shouted Buddha.

You've never been anywhere where someone stubbed their toe and they shouted, oh Allah. When people curse they curse the name of the God that they know exists You never hear somebody yell Oh Santa Claus when a bad thing happens But you will hear them say the name of Jesus Christ over and over. And there are several other forms of blasphemy. But so this guy cursed, so they bring him to Moses.

So Moses has already separated out things where he's got these, we'll call them sub-judges that are supposed to be judging on his behalf so he doesn't have to just sit there all day and resolve disputes. And yet this is what some people said, this is the first instance of blasphemy where they actually needed to resolve it. And the fact that it was an Egyptian man's son, they thought maybe it made the Israelites wonder, well, how should we handle this exactly?

And so they bring them to Moses because they want to make sure we get this right. We know he blasphemed. There's witnesses. We heard what came out of his mouth, so we don't even have to question what's in his heart. We already know what's in your heart by what comes out of your mouth. And so they come to Moses.

And they put him in custody till the will of Yahweh should be clear to them. And so they're going to take time to pray. They're going to take time to think about what is the Lord's will for this situation and I would say that part of it is that they were hoping for some revelation from God. This was a time where God was revealing through Moses a lot of truth that people didn't have.

I mean, this is the third book of the Bible, right? But the time this was going on, they had the tablets with the Ten Commandments and there wasn't a lot more for them to meditate on and to search. but it is instructive I think as a side point to the blasphemy argument that those of us today who have to make decisions for example a church full of people who needs to find elders and deacons maybe we should be spending time seeking God's will through his word making sure we understand the qualifications, and even in some of your cases, maybe you need to be training yourself in case that's what God's calling you to. But then the Lord spoke to Moses, so it could be in for Moses, of course, that he's got a direct line.

Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him. So first of all, he says bring him out. but he's going to be a public spectacle and everybody's going to know this is what he did and the witnesses are going to be there too and the witnesses will have to testify in front of the people that they heard it and I suppose there may have been a sense that he could have had a chance to defend himself and if no witnesses had showed up wouldn't be any charges against him But the witnesses lay their hands on his head to signify that your guilt is on your own head. You are the one who blasphemed God.

You cannot point your finger at any of us. And you cannot point your finger at the guy you were fighting with and say, he caused me to do it. One of the excuses that many of you use when you blaspheme is, I was angry. Oh, you know, we would think to ourselves, if a guy was in the middle of a fight and he was injured, maybe the other guy was even fighting dirty.

One of the excuses we make is, well, we can understand how that might slip out at that time. But God doesn't see it that way. God sees blasphemy as wickedness in your heart and the temptation that comes through the circumstances that maybe are what brought it out of you have nothing to do with the fact that you've offended him. All it did was make it come out.

So you need to stop excusing yourself. You need to stop blaming others for why you have thoughts where you blaspheme the name of God. Use it improperly. And so Moses tells him, this is what has to happen. And God tells Moses, speak to the people of Israel, saying, whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. You will bear your own sin.

Nobody else. This is not a situation where another guy could be blamed for what you just cursed. and he says whoever blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death that's frightening and severe isn't it and I don't mean severe in like that's a bad way it's severe because it's simply severe God's judgments are always righteous and God does all things well I like the old English God doeth all things well being put to death is an extremely serious consequence and most of us here can understand well real quick the sojourner as well as the native when he blasphemes the name shall be put to death verse 16 this applies to everyone there but we kind of understand verse 17 which in my bible has a little separate heading and it makes it look like a new thought. I want to remind you, those little headings can be helpful.

I don't always think they are. I think sometimes they distract you from reading in the context. It says in 17, whoever takes the human life shall surely be put to death. So literally, what God just said in a span of three sentences is if you murder someone, you get put to death, and if you drop... OMG, you get put to death. And I'm just going to tell you that one of the things about blasphemy that makes it hard is sometimes you're trying to just even describe it, and you're almost afraid whether you're doing it or not.

I think there's times we can just explain, well, here's something people say, and I think people know what I mean by that. So I could say to you, for example, it would be improper to use the name Jesus Christ as a curse word, And I didn't just use it as a curse word. I simply described to you how it's done. And so we want to be careful. The psalmist says a number of times, oh my God, and he starts a psalm.

And then he's praising God and he's praying to him, he's talking to him. It's not always blasphemy to say the exact same phrase even. And so we have to be able to understand that blasphemy is something that comes from your heart. But this is extremely serious. if you take somebody's animal and kill their animal you just have to give them a new animal you blaspheme the name of God whether you're a guest on the property or not you should be put to death I don't know about you but I get the impression that God takes this very very seriously and I think that if we look around a society that is severely degraded from where it once was.

You know, it was never perfect. I think we can start to see how some of these sins of the breaking of the first, the second, and the third, and the fourth commandment, the ones that most of us only do in our heart, the ones that we tolerate other people do publicly a little bit, these are the ones that have led to all the other problems we have. But they're the ones God actually takes more seriously.

One of the reasons why when the response to the pandemic started, and they told us that if you loved your neighbor, we all had to stay home on Sunday. One of the reasons why some of us said that's hogwash is because we were told to love your neighbor, you had to stay home on Sunday. And we realized that if I loved my neighbor, I'd obey the first four commandments.

Because the only way my neighbor is going to find out who Jesus Christ is, and the only way my neighbor is going to have a place to go and find forgiveness of his sins and have any kind of spiritual benefit is if the church is gathering and if the church isn't blaspheming God's name and if the church isn't tolerating idolatry and making images and things like that. The first four commandments, oftentimes people call it the two tables of the law. I don't believe God wrote them in that way, first four and six, so I don't call it that necessarily. but the first four commandments are of primary importance.

You can outwardly obey commandment 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. You can't really outwardly obey the 10th one anyway, but you can outwardly obey the commandments and be an awfully good-seeming neighbor to people, and the whole time, if you're violating the first four, you actually hate your neighbor because you can't love your neighbor if you don't love God. So God takes it extremely seriously.

And then he goes through this section about laws. He says, if you injure your neighbor, it shall be done to you as it was done to him. He just tries to give people an idea. Here's the equity of the law. You knock out your neighbor's tooth, well, guess what? We're going to take one of your teeth.

You fracture your neighbor, we're going to fracture you. It's a Latin term called lex talionis, they call it. And it's just the idea that, one, you're supposed to be deterred from your evil that you intend to do because you don't want the same thing done to you. This is really another way of saying, do unto others as you would like to be done unto yourself.

Don't kill your neighbor's goat. You've got to give him one of your goats. in the next chapter it even tells you if you see a guy if you hate someone and their ox is stuck you go help the ox out you just do unto others what you'd want done unto you and secondly it was to prevent over retaliation so if somebody stole your lamp they didn't owe you ten lamps They weren't to be put to death for it. They only did one lamp.

It was to prevent over-retaliation. So if in the same context where God explains that we are not going to have over-retaliation, and He says that if you blaspheme My name, you're to be stoned to death, there is no justification any of us have to think that stoning someone for blasphemy is over the top. Now, the general equity of God's law, that's the word we use in the Baptist Confession of 1689, is the general equity of God's law.

Some of these specific case laws we recognize in the church age, in the time since Jesus is risen from the grave we recognize that that is to be applied very specifically in the church that just like a man would have been stoned and he would have been taken out of the congregation of Israel in the old covenant in the new covenant if somebody in your church is a blasphemer you're to remove them through excommunication And so even as Elijah was reading from the confession today, paragraph 13 was very much related to if you in the midst of discipline with someone That can be a very hard thing My first temptation if I had a problem with someone in church would be well I not going this week Ooh what if you had a problem with the guy that handing out communion That'd be even harder, wouldn't it? The guy that's going to preach. Paragraph 13 says, you still go, you participate in all the ordinances and everything.

Because it's really not about that one guy. It's about the church and the Lord Jesus Christ being the head and the trust of Him. So, it's important to understand, blasphemy in the eyes of God is utterly serious. Turn to Psalm 138, verse 2. I'm just going to jump around and look at some verses now to try to drive the point home. So, if me reading about an Egyptian guy's son who, in the middle of a fight, dropped the curse word about God getting stoned, if that wasn't sufficient for you to think that this is pretty serious, let's look at some more verses.

Psalm 138, verse 2. I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness. and he says for you have exalted above all things your name and your word next week we're going to look of course whenever I say next week I always change my mind but the plan right now next week is to take a look at God's name and what it's used for Genesis 4 it says people call on the name of the Lord Romans 10 it says all those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved Paul says there's no other name, or Peter said there's no other name given under heaven among men whereby men must be saved we're told to pray in Jesus' name I'll give you a little tip to avoid blasphemy saying in Jesus' name at the end of your prayer is not a magic formula and I suspect that most of the time we say it we're blaspheming because we're not even thinking about what we're saying but we'll do that next week so I just started next week's sermon for you God's name is holy he's exalted it look at Exodus 21 17 I'll jump around a little bit Exodus 21 17 whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death well if you've ever heard of logic, which if you're a Christian I hope you continue to be a student of it. You make an argument sometimes called from the lesser to the greater.

Where we say something like, well, if you curse your father or mother, you should be put to death. How much worse punishment do you deserve if you curse God? If you curse someone lesser than God, you're put to death. and you break the fifth commandment which comes after the third, how much worse is it to break the third commandment? Turn to Exodus 22.

Similar thought. Exodus 22, 28. This one gets quoted in the book of Acts by Paul. I think some people misunderstand Paul's sarcasm in Acts in my opinion, but Joe brought this one up the other day. But in Exodus 22, 28, it says, you shall not revile God, nor curse the ruler of your people. So if you're not to curse the ruler of your people, you certainly shouldn't curse God, right?

It says, you shall not revile God, nor curse the ruler of your people. I think we have to be careful sometimes how we talk, even about men who we could rightly say are acting as tyrants. Let's turn to Jude. The book of Jude, verse 8. The context of Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities being punished by an eternal fire. It says, yet in like manner, these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.

There's some argument about what the glorious ones are, but at the very least, whether it's angelic beings or whether it's simply your governors that are over you and actually have some power, governors who, I think it's in Psalm 82, are actually called gods, and Jesus quotes that with a little G. If we can blaspheme other men, By cursing their name, how much worse is it to blaspheme God? In verse 10 of Jude, we'll go back to 9.

When the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses. That's a whole other sermon there. But he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment. Michael, the archangel, wouldn't even blaspheme the devil. He wasn't going to call upon the name of Jesus to cast the devil out. And John Gill thinks Michael the archangel is actually destroying Jesus, but that's a neat one.

He's got a good argument for it. He says, yet in like manner these people also, I'm going to attempt, but these people blaspheme all that they do not understand. And then he says they are destroyed by all that they like unreasoning animals understand instinctively Blasphemy is spoken of a lot in the scripture Before I forget to remind you of this repeatedly, your blasphemy is probably just a small fraction of your sin of blasphemy is what comes out of your mouth.

Because I'm not going to be there to check all your words that you say. If I see you online and I see you post something I think is inappropriate, I'll tell you. Praise God for people who are willing to reach out to one another and do that. There was a person that came to me and said I was blaspheming the Lord after I first got saved. And I said, no, I don't really think I am.

And then I couldn't sleep that night because it bothered me in my spirit so much. And I would have just kept going on doing it if I hadn't heard somebody correct me. But a lot of your blasphemy is just in your heart. I dare say just being ungrateful to God is a form of blasphemy. I mean, you could probably make a really big umbrella here. Most people want to reduce it down to a list of words they shouldn't say, or they only can say them in prayer and praise.

It's about a heart attitude that respects God's name. Look at Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12, verse 31. we have a verse that I think some people may have questions about. And I'm not going to answer them. But Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people. He says, But the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

So Jesus just finished saying that he's going to forgive all sorts of blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And I'm not going to get into all the different arguments for what that can mean, but at the very least, what it means is if you deny the call of God to believe the Gospel, you're hell-bound. and I think that this is typified by the OT the Old Testament punishment for blasphemy ok so the Old Testament the guy blasphemed he was the son of an Egyptian and the son of an Israelite woman and so he was just every man he was unnamed I think it's important I think it's helpful he wouldn't always be remembered as Joe the blasphemer. He was representative of all of us.

And the people who heard his blasphemy were responsible to go stand before the congregation and pronounce judgment upon him. And then the death sentence was executed by all the people. He didn't get struck dead by God. There was no hope for repentance. There was no mercy. And in the New Testament, in this era that we can speak of now, if you are a blasphemer, if you will commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God even, and proclaim that the work that the Holy Spirit was doing in Jesus Christ's life as He was the incarnate Lord, there's no forgiveness for you.

You'll be witnessed against, and you will be cast into outer darkness for all eternity. My point is that it's serious. Jesus could have come and he could have said, hey, make sure you recycle plastic bottles and whatever other things people think saves them. He could have said all sorts of, or he could have just said, hey, obey the second half of God's law.

Don't worry about the first, just make sure you try to do the second, and then we'll be, he could have said that. But instead Jesus says that blasphemy, against the Spirit, he's going to send you to hell. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse 28 to 31, I have a supporting verse, and I promise I'm almost finished. Hebrews chapter 10, though, I think supports what I just taught you.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. what we saw with this blasphemer in Israel was there was no mercy for him because the witnesses knew what he had done. How much worse punishment, see we think this is New Testament, it's going to be all good, right? How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the Spirit of grace.

For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. In the Old Testament, when somebody heard your blasphemy, if they had enough courage and they knew themselves not to be a blasphemer, they would have witnessed against you and you would have been put to death. But there were blasphemers all through Israel, I'm sure of it. and they never got caught.

Or they did it in their own house, and the other people weren't going to witness against them. Or maybe they did it with other people who did it too, and nobody was going to witness against the other guy, because then they'd be guilty, right? And they thought they got away with it. But vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. The Lord sees it all. and he is the one who going to repay those who blaspheme his name Regarding that law of blasphemy Matthew Henry said this blasphemer was the first that died by the law of Moses And Matthew Henry continues, he says, Stephen, the first that died for the gospel, died by the abuse of this law.

The martyr and the malefactor suffered the same death, but how vast the difference between them. I thought that was poignant, if you remember the story of Stephen, but forget Stephen for a minute. Why was Jesus killed? What did they call him? They called him a blasphemer. He said, I and the Father are one, and the Jews picked up stones again to stone him.

John chapter 10. The Jews were actually trying to apply the letter of God's law to what they heard Jesus doing. So in Psalm 69, a prophetic and messianic psalm, of course I should I repeat myself because I'm one of the I'm a cloudy-eyed, I believe they're all messianic but I'll explain that another time if you want. In Psalm 69, verse 9, speaking about Jesus, it says, for zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

I heard somebody say, praise God, because I know where I'm going with this. Because Jesus Christ was punished as if he had committed all the blasphemies that you're still committing in your heart right now. Because all the stones that you deserve for all the times you've misused God's name, for all the times you haven't stood up for God's name, for all the times you've cursed him and you've figured out, well, at least outwardly I won't say it.

Or I'll use the substitute words like gosh or heck or all these things that we say that make us think we're not actually misusing the holy things of God. Jesus Christ suffered as if he had done every single one of them. The reproaches that you meant for God in your heart of flesh, Jesus took upon himself. And I think it would be appropriate if you're grateful that he would do that for you, that you would repent.

I'd love to say stop blaspheming, but no man is going to be able to perfectly do it that you repent and you continue to rest in the forgiveness that Christ offers and you beg him to help you stop. And you will see change. You will see change in the way you think. You will see change in what comes out of your mouth. You'll see change in the times that you're around people that are blaspheming and you speak up.

And you know, I get criticized because when I preach on the street, I hate to make it about me, but when I'm on the street, the people criticize me because sometimes I give people a sharp rebuke when they walk by me. Sometimes people say I should be nicer as if standing and preaching on the street is ever considered nice anyway. But I'll tell you what, when somebody walks by me and I'm in the middle of proclaiming the goodness and the grace of Jesus Christ and the hope of eternal life to people who need to hear it desperately and somebody wants to blaspheme his name, I rebuke them.

And you know what? on the day of judgment, they'll be wishing that they had that mean preacher yelling at them instead of what God's going to do to them. And so every one of us needs to repent of our misuse of God's name, His titles, His attributes, His word, and His works. But we need to start taking it more seriously. Father in heaven, we come to you as a weak and needy people, people who realize that even in our best hope, we don't believe we could ever stop in our flesh sinning against you.

That when we realize that even if our mouth should be shut and our vocal cords torn out, we would blaspheme you with a whole heart. Some of us, the minute things don't go our way, we're angry at you. And so Lord, I ask you to forgive us for cursing your name. forgive us for our misuse of all that is holy and help us help us to be humble about this and to allow one another to sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron and to be edified by one another and to be open to the fact that maybe just maybe the thing we didn't think was blasphemy really is and if a loving and sensitive brother comes to us and tries to help us may we be open to that I pray for the children in here as they are surrounded by a people of dirty lips.

That they would grow up and they would grow up in a crooked and twisted generation and they themselves would be holy and shine as lights. That you would save our children and save them from this wickedness that so many of us lived in. The filth that we wallowed in for years until Jesus came. So Father, I ask you to do this work in our hearts because of your great name and how it deserves praise and honor and glory.

And I do pray only in the name of your son Jesus, whose precious blood was spilled for us and who rose again and is at your right hand with the name that is exalted. may our knees bow in the name of Jesus as you said they would Amen