July 22, 2018
Deuteronomy 5:11 (ESV)
11 “ ‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain…
Deuteronomy 6:13 (ESV)
13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.
Leviticus 19:12 (ESV)
12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
- the idea was to c____________ them to the seriousness of their whole life before God...
- It was designed to remind the nation of Israel of their r________________________ with God,
- to stress that everything that they did was under the e_____ of God.
- That e________ part of their life was to be lived unto Him.
- .... He is saying that we need to be careful of how we use oaths....
- First of all He wants to think about the b_______ of our oaths.... We must not swear by heaven or earth or Jerusalem etc.... because these are not ours to f__________ even if we do go back on our word....
- I think that what He is forbidding is that common kind of oath taking that goes on in order to win an argument, or to convince someone that we are sincere....
- As Christians we need to be people of our W______. E____ the right to be taken seriously when you speak.
- .... how often do we “stretch the truth”... or bend it just a little??? Someone has said, “E___________, thy name is legion!”
- As Christians we need to be men and women of our word!!! And this takes a concerted e_______ on our part…. We must not lie.... (and make no mistake, we are all given to it, if not always in a bare-faced way).
- We must do what we say we are going to do,
- Jesus point here is that, as believers, we need to realize that no matter what we say, we are speaking that in the very p_______________ of God.
- We bring Him to the conversation by our very presents. We should always speak with the c_______ a________ of His presents. We are His people and a lie that we may tell to someone in a private conversation may just come between that one and the Lord in the issue of Salvation....
- E__________ that we do is of the utmost importance.
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"And don't say anything you don't mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions.
You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, 'I'll pray for you,' and never doing it, or saying, 'God be with you,' and not meaning it. You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.
Just say 'yes' and 'no.' When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.”
Matthew 5:33-37 The Message