Exodus 20:7 You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain. I. THE DIVINE PROHIBITION — 1. Forbids perjury. 2. Forbids hypocrisy — insincere worship. 3. Forbids profanity. II. THE DIVINE WARNING. Being in its very nature the most godless of sins, God from His very nature cannot allow it to go unpunished. Did you ever read that remarkable assertion of the famous mathematician, Charles Babbage, in the "Ninth Bridgwater Treatise," to the effect that the slightest word, though it be but a whispered interjection, vibrating in the air, sets in operation a series of changes which undulate to the very outskirts of creation, rising and falling like an everlasting tide? The whole material universe is a mighty whispering-gallery, in which the Infinite One is everlastingly hearing every word, every whisper, breathed by every human being, from the day Adam pronounced his first vocable in Eden to the day when human time shall be no more. If, then, the scarcely audible rustle of an unconscious aspen leaf sets in inexorable motion atom after atom — from leaf to tree, from tree to earth, from earth to star, till the whole material creation responds in undulation — think you that an oath, spoken by conscious, responsible man, will ever die away, or go unpunished? Oh, no! Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain. (G. D. Boardman.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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