In this thought-provoking discussion, Michael Gewecke and Clint Loveall delve into the third commandment and its implications for our speech and relationship with God. They explore the concept of not misusing or emptying the name of the Lord, going beyond the surface-level understanding of avoiding profanity. Instead, they emphasize the importance of using our words to create life and reflect the greatness of God. The speakers also touch on the danger of leveraging God’s name for personal gain, highlighting the significance of recognizing God’s authority and submitting to His will. Throughout the conversation, they draw connections to the New Testament teachings on gossip, complaint, and the power of words to either build up or destroy community. Join them as they invite listeners to reconsider their speech and honor God with their words.
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Watch, Listen, & Read the Full Transcript
00:00:01:33 – 00:00:30:46
Michael Gewecke
Okay. it’s a joy to have you all with us, I think. I think this is safe to say that we anticipate we’re we’re barely keeping this on the rails or we haven’t even started yet. But it’s safe to say Kaboom is three and four. This is going to be an interesting evening. And I think it interesting conversation in lots of different ways, because in many ways, these are commandments that are going to be very familiar to you.
00:00:30:59 – 00:00:47:51
Michael Gewecke
And in other ways, they may be commandments that that miss us, that we may actually look at these. And when we give them really close consideration, we might think to ourselves, I don’t know how I have seen that applying in my life. And we want to sort of drill into that as we go.
00:00:47:56 – 00:01:23:47
Clint Loveall
There is a there is a thing about the language that is helpful here when when we when we read You shall not misuse or take the name of your Lord God in vain. We hear one thing, but it does help to remember that for the Israelites in the Hebrew language, they literally had a name. It says, You shall not take the name of your way, your Elohim.
00:01:23:47 – 00:01:55:36
Clint Loveall
Elohim means God. Elohim is a description of what God is, but Yahweh is the claim of who God is. So when it says name, it literally means name. We in English kind of shove all that under the word God. So for the the hearers of this, it is important to know that that they literally have been entrusted with what they understand to be God’s actual name.
00:01:55:40 – 00:02:35:54
Clint Loveall
So the idea is there just for them, stub your toe and, you know, God bearing it. The idea is that they call on God’s name your way in vain. And so I think as we get into this, it does help to keep in mind and at least to whatever extent possible, try to see this from the lens of people who believed they had been given their God’s actual name, that not just a title or a description, but a relational component of who God actually is.
00:02:36:03 – 00:02:37:48
Clint Loveall
And I think that helps a little bit.
00:02:38:00 – 00:02:58:17
Michael Gewecke
Okay. So we’re going to just start right from that place that client begins with. And the idea of when we think of this commandment, is it is it safe to say, would you largely agree that what we think of not using the Lord’s name and then we generally think of that as do not costs, do not swear. Right.
00:02:58:30 – 00:03:23:02
Michael Gewecke
What happens when you hit your thumb with a hammer? Be careful. What comes out of your mouth is what we think. Right. And in a very particular way, I think we need to start there to name that. Because if that’s connected to the commandment, I think it fairly is. It’s connected to the smallest part of it. And it’s not even a holistic understanding of the small part it’s describing.
00:03:23:02 – 00:03:48:59
Michael Gewecke
And we’re going to hope to to really expand that and to understand that we’re going to take over here that classification of words that we would use, as I’m just going to call them cuss words, words that we’ve socially said this is inappropriate soap words. That’s right. The seminary professors would appreciate that. You should you should send that to them.
00:03:48:59 – 00:04:10:50
Michael Gewecke
The soap words. All right. So, yeah, your soap words over here. Okay. So we we’ve got that here, but we’re going to pause for a moment and we’re going to come over here and we’re going to talk about religious words. We’re going to talk about words of substance and meaning. Okay. And in the ancient world, there is this concept of the idea of oaths of oath giving.
00:04:10:55 – 00:04:46:32
Michael Gewecke
But there’s also this idea of swearing to or swearing by. And the idea behind this is relatively simple. If you have access to someone who is above you in the totem pole and you can say in the name of so-and-so, you do this for me, and that would work. You would do it right. And the idea is, if you have access to the name of a God and you can, in that God’s name, declare things to be true and it works, then you should do that.
00:04:46:37 – 00:05:08:43
Michael Gewecke
And so people would use oaths or they would swear by gods and they would say, by this God’s name, you do this, and depending upon where you were, what time you were, that may or may not be effective. That may or may not help you. But as night goes, we have statements in the Scripture, like Jesus, you might remember, says, Let your yes be yes, let your know be no.
00:05:08:43 – 00:05:36:36
Michael Gewecke
He said, You know, don’t swear by the heaven or the earth or anything between them. The idea behind that is connecting to this idea. Do not try to utilize created things so that you can exercise authority over other things. I promise I’m moving you someplace that’s a little bit more practical here quickly. But what that means is that when you start swearing by other things, you start having a kind of connection to that thing.
00:05:36:36 – 00:06:01:52
Michael Gewecke
You become subject to that thing. And so if you start claiming, hey, you need to do this in the name of this person, you’ve now made yourself a connection to that person. And so in that case, what ends up happening is you start claiming that you have the power of gods using the name of gods, which violates the commandments last week.
00:06:01:57 – 00:06:28:10
Michael Gewecke
Right. You see how if you start trying to exercise the authority of God by calling upon other gods to do what you want, now you are putting a law above the Lord, and that violates the first and greatest commandment. So what you say is not just in the matter of soap words, so the matter of allegiance says of deepest religious value, Who do you see is your Lord?
00:06:28:15 – 00:06:53:42
Michael Gewecke
And if you believe that is the God who called you out of Egypt, which is what we had in the very first part of these commandments, then you know, you shouldn’t be calling on other gods to do your bidding. Those two thought things don’t live together. And so we come right out of the gate in a kind of denial of the people using God’s name to their own benefit.
00:06:53:47 – 00:07:23:33
Michael Gewecke
right. Okay. So, yeah, we were searching for what is the closest analog for this, because I know that that. That seems dated right? I doubt the last time that you had someone come to your house and say, by Thor’s hammer, make me soup or whatever it is. Right. So this is a bit outside of our experience, except for if you’ve ever had a family member or you yourself maybe have spent some time in the prosperity gospel world, many of you know that that that that’s a thing I was conversant in as a child.
00:07:23:38 – 00:07:46:28
Michael Gewecke
All the logic in that community of faith goes like this If you’re sick or if your bank account is low, or if your children are not respecting you, what you need to do is you need to say in the name of Jesus, I call you to do this thing. I call you healthy. I call you to be respectful.
00:07:46:42 – 00:08:09:16
Michael Gewecke
I call my financial situation to reverse. And then they say you need to do some things. You need to give some money. That’s convenient. Of course you need to give some money. You need to say some prayers, you need to do some other things. But when you do that and you keep saying this happens in the name of Jesus, they say Prosperity gospel teaches it’s going to happen for you.
00:08:09:21 – 00:08:37:10
Michael Gewecke
I submit to you that’s exactly what this commandment is calling us not to do that. The commandment is telling us that we don’t get to use Jesus name to do whatever we want. What was Jesus’s prayer? Thy will be done. I let’s be clear about this. Jesus is the son of God, full member of the Trinity, praying thy will be done.
00:08:37:15 – 00:09:04:30
Michael Gewecke
We as humans show up to prayer and we start using Jesus his name to win lotteries and to go on trips to some place. That’s it. That is the kind of abuse of the divine name that’s exactly in mind in the commandment. It’s when we try to leverage God for our own sake. That is a violation of what the spirit of the third command.
00:09:04:35 – 00:09:34:17
Clint Loveall
And I don’t know if there are equivalents in each case with Protestants, but I do remember a well-meaning, but I suspect not theologically educated Sunday school teacher. I had as a young person telling our small class that if you didn’t end your prayer within Jesus name, God couldn’t hear it. And so I remember these prayers and then thinking, crap, did I say the magic word at the end or not?
00:09:34:17 – 00:10:02:38
Clint Loveall
You know? And if you’ll bear with me for a minute, the word vain. You know, sometimes you read this commandment, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. That’s. That’s perhaps closer. It’s not a better translation, but it may be a better capturing of the meaning. The word vain in Hebrew means empty. In other words, you shall not take the name of your way.
00:10:02:38 – 00:10:38:42
Clint Loveall
The the living creating God of the universe who has adopted you as a people and treat that name as if it is empty. If it’s devoid of meaning, you shall not empty the the God of heaven and earth name. And you know you could maybe even you shall not make God’s name small. And I would argue, when you even well-meaning, call a group of kids, you have to say this the right way, or God can’t.
00:10:38:43 – 00:11:08:04
Clint Loveall
You won’t get your prayer. You won’t be doing that. So important is this commandment that’s one of very few in the ten Commandment that carries a warning. And it is a heavy warning. This one has a punishment attached to it. No one who misuses the name of the Lord, your God will be held innocent or guiltless. Think about that for a minute.
00:11:08:09 – 00:11:33:24
Clint Loveall
As we read the Ten Commandments, we could have lots of discussion about the editing and the transmission, whatever else. But as we read the Ten Commandments, as they have come to us, we have the God of Heaven and Earth saying, I take this so seriously that those who do it will not be made clean. They will not be considered guiltless.
00:11:33:28 – 00:11:58:45
Clint Loveall
It will have to be a little careful mixing New Testament and Old Testament language. But there’s a sense here of they will not be forgiven. Now we know that ultimately that’s not what it says, but that’s the idea. That’s the threat behind that, that this is so serious to the people that it carries the threat that God won’t forget if they do it.
00:11:58:49 – 00:12:29:35
Clint Loveall
God is not going to not remember, you did this, you people did this or you individual did this. And Michael and I were talking before the session. What is interesting about that is it would be fun maybe at the end of this Lenten season we’ll try this. It would be interesting to try and write the commandments in modern life from least important to most important, I suspect.
00:12:29:40 – 00:12:57:25
Clint Loveall
Don’t misuse those. God’s name would be high on the least list. I think most people think, yeah, I shouldn’t say I shouldn’t consume public or I should, you know, yeah, I should watch my mouth. But but I don’t think people understand this, nor do I think they elevate it. Certainly not to the place where they would imagine God saying, I’m not overlooking that one.
00:12:57:30 – 00:13:05:15
Clint Loveall
I’m not. I take that one very, very seriously. I just don’t think most people get there.
00:13:05:20 – 00:13:41:58
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think I think we can make that point pretty succinctly. So I’ve literally had this happen. A kid makes a mistake. They’re proud of their parents. They use the Lord’s name in vain. I’ve had the parent look at the kid and say, not in front of the pastor, but like the not in front of God. If we take seriously the commandment, what’s at stake is the creator of the universe who has the sole right of judging those who live in sin.
00:13:42:03 – 00:14:17:08
Michael Gewecke
Who cares about the pastor? That’s the least of your troubles. You should see what he said. 5 minutes ago. But we don’t take seriously, I think, the identity of God, which is what this is speaking towards. This is a relational command. And there’s a sense in which I think we’ve misplaced the big danger of the profane because we’re afraid of poor, of profanity and and profane in God is the worst thing you can imagine.
00:14:17:13 – 00:14:47:54
Michael Gewecke
But the thing that we’re afraid of is not in front of the pastor. And I think that we have to reframe this commandment in our minds to see it’s not about the soap words, because both my client and I went to Christian schools are very of Christian colleges have very different stripes. But in both places are college students going around with all different kinds of euphemisms for for curse words.
00:14:47:56 – 00:15:11:53
Michael Gewecke
Right. And and all of them clearly referencing the thing that you’re not saying. Well, at the end of the day, does God care if you include this word or this word? No, it’s Jesus makes it clear. It’s the substance of the heart. And so at the end of the day, if we’re going to if we’re going to take the third commandment seriously, I think we have to move away from this idea.
00:15:11:58 – 00:15:42:48
Michael Gewecke
How many times in a week did I say a word on this list? And we need to move away from that to a way of understanding how I honor God with my speech this week. And so entirely different construct. And it requires us rethinking our relationship with God. Have my words reflected the greatness of a being who took on flesh to die for me, which, by the way, I’m going a little bit off notes here.
00:15:42:48 – 00:16:11:27
Michael Gewecke
I’m going to get back on because nobody knows what’s about to happen. But I’m just going to say, I think this is why in the New Testament commandments against gossip and complaint are so prevalent, the backbiting, because the idea is you’re using your words all James, you’re using your words to light fires that are destroying the community. And when you do that, you’re you’re cutting against the creator of that community.
00:16:11:27 – 00:16:31:06
Michael Gewecke
And so I think the power of words in a Christian context has a real history in the New Testament that we we may have minimized them to be. Am I using God’s name in a way that that fits the soap words? And I think that we have to we have to understand that God expects us to use our words in the way that that creates life.
00:16:31:06 – 00:16:36:32
Michael Gewecke
Like God’s words, create life. And that’s an entirely different way of understanding what God calls us to.
00:16:36:34 – 00:16:50:15
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it I mean, follow the point, right? We’re not saying you should get out there and start throwing around profanity. You know, go drop f bombs out on unsuspecting people. That’s that’s not it.
00:16:50:16 – 00:16:53:04
Michael Gewecke
And say I’m Presbyterian. My pastor told me, Do that. Don’t do that.
00:16:53:18 – 00:17:28:40
Clint Loveall
I mean, there are there are Christians who swear boldly in the in the idea that the we’re free to say what we want. And I was telling Michael this earlier, I was out of football clinic this weekend. One of the conferences was a small group of guy was teaching on the 11 eyes of service leadership. So I went in really good teachers out of Catholic school coaches.
00:17:28:48 – 00:17:51:03
Clint Loveall
Catholic school had a lot of success. Looks like he runs a really good program. Lots of stuff that I learned about. And it was I felt well implemented and is very clear early on in the presentation. It comes from a religious point. He had some Jesus staff, had some Bible quotes, but then slipped into football coach language at multiple points during the thing.
00:17:51:03 – 00:18:16:23
Clint Loveall
And I thought, Given his audience, does this help him or hurt him? I’m not I’m not sure. But I remember thinking there is a little bit of a disconnect about what you said at the front and the words you said in the middle. So, yes, we should pay attention to our language. Yes, we should be people who try to speak in ways that are edifying.
00:18:16:28 – 00:18:42:27
Clint Loveall
Michael’s replacement swear words. You know, I had a teammate in college who often when he would make a mistake, would yell cheese and rice and people would snap their head and he would say, you know, get like technically, I didn’t say it. You know, it’s so he just but that’s not it. This is relational. The Israelites understood this.
00:18:42:27 – 00:19:09:27
Clint Loveall
So seriously, so much did they revere God’s name? And I know some of this is repetition and I’m sorry if you’ve heard this before. They would not say the word Yahweh. And then he got to the point where they wouldn’t write the word Yahweh. They would write shorthand. In fact, Jews, to this day, if if they are fairly conservative, will not write the word God.
00:19:09:34 – 00:19:55:45
Clint Loveall
You will see g slash D. Now, just to follow that, that is a Jewish person who is not writing the full English word. That is a translation of a Hebrew word that someone wouldn’t write or say that is revering the name of God. Now it’s a little legalistic, I’ll grant you that. But they are so concerned with the idea of the sacredness of who God is that they don’t want to take risk of making that small, of being flippant with it or treating it as commonplace.
00:19:55:49 – 00:20:31:54
Clint Loveall
And that is a significant way. We I think here this, as Michael said, as a commandment about profanity rather than its intent, which is about profane and, well, how is it that our words should reflect the glory and the greatness of God? How is it that our language should endeavor to make God bigger and not smaller? And how do we do that as Christian people?
00:20:31:58 – 00:20:49:17
Michael Gewecke
So we’re going to move here to Westminster here pretty quickly. I just want to share with you, I’ve been sharing, as we go through the commandments, some of our forebear, Calvin’s thoughts, and I think his thoughts as it relates to the third command are very helpful. So if you’re looking for summaries, here are some. There are three takeaways from the third commandment.
00:20:49:17 – 00:21:25:16
Michael Gewecke
You could you could easily take on an index card. Calvin says that, number one, one thing we should take away from this amendment is that every Christian is called to use your words in a way that reflect the glory and greatness of God. So instead of measuring your words based upon a rubric of what you shouldn’t say, Calvin is going to turn that back to you and say you should judge your words by Do they stand up to the measure of the glory and greatness of God?
00:21:25:21 – 00:21:59:12
Michael Gewecke
And then Calvin goes on to say, We shouldn’t use or abuse God’s Word or the mysterious nature of God’s work in our lives spiritually and I think that this is really powerful. He says we should not speak rashly or perversely for the sake of our own ambition or greed or amusement, which, by the way, is all television. That’s like all late night, everything after 7:00 on TV.
00:21:59:16 – 00:22:38:15
Michael Gewecke
The idea of using words in the way that benefit us, that that simply add value to our own amusement or our own vanity. The idea we should not abuse God’s holy word in our life. And the third is we should not defame God’s work or actions in the world. And what he means by that is to whatever extent you see something that speaks of of God’s work, if you see something that speaks of Jesus at work, if you don’t have something positive to say about that to the world, then you’re not doing justice to God working in your life.
00:22:38:20 – 00:23:01:37
Michael Gewecke
The idea is, if you see God as a human, would, there’s no other proper response but to give thanks for it. And we shouldn’t defame God by not giving God glory for the good things that God does. My life, which once again, I go back to the New Testament. How many times in the New Testament do you have a command to be to offer Thanksgiving or to be a people of joy?
00:23:01:48 – 00:23:27:59
Michael Gewecke
Why is that true? Because whenever you see God, you give thanks and you are a person of joy that those two things are intimately connected. All right. At this point, we would love for you to all take your parts that you wrote on ahead of time and we’ll see how many you had in the fourth section or the third commandment.
00:23:27:59 – 00:23:59:53
Michael Gewecke
And then we’ll look at the the forbid section on the other side. So Third commandment requires that the name of God his titles attributes ordinances the words sacraments, prayer, old vowels, lots, his works, and whatever else there is whereby he makes himself known, be wholly and reverently used in thought, meditation, word and writing by a holy profession and answerable conversation to the glory of God and the good of ourselves and others.
00:23:59:58 – 00:24:34:46
Michael Gewecke
The sins forbidden in the third commandment are the not using of God’s name as is required, and the abuse of it in an ignorant, vain, irreverent, profane, superstitious, or a wicked mentioning or otherwise using his titles, attributes, ordinances, or works by blasphemy, perjury, all sinful curse things, oaths, vows, and lots violating of our oaths and vows if lawful and fulfilling them if of things unlawful murmuring and quarreling at curious prying into and misapplying of God’s decrees and providence is misinterpreting, misapplying or any way perverting.
00:24:34:46 – 00:25:03:49
Michael Gewecke
There’s more word or any part of it add to profane jest. I actually want to pause here because there was a point in the year that that I’d like to lift out if I could. So one of the earliest saw among the earliest generation of Christians, there was a significant amount of time and attention theologically devoted to the idea of oath giving and specifically related to the military.
00:25:03:54 – 00:25:41:10
Michael Gewecke
And in fact, it’s a Augustine who wrote an entire treatise. boy. 300 to the three. Yeah. Sorry. I don’t have the exact data on whether Augustine that I should. He’s like a lion of Christian theology, so. Good job, Michael. But the the whole argument that Augustine makes is essentially that if the treatise goes like this, he says, if when you join the military, you have to make an oath to the state, does that oath keep you from ultimately keeping this commandment?
00:25:41:15 – 00:26:10:31
Michael Gewecke
The idea being, if you say, I will follow what you tell me. His point was, does that supersede the oath that ultimately is required of God and his lordship to you? And it’s a very long treatise, and I’m going to summarize it. He basically comes out on the other side and says, as long as you ultimately follow an allegiance to God first, then it is fair and it is reasonable for a human also to make an oath to another human institution.
00:26:10:31 – 00:26:38:06
Michael Gewecke
But I just want to point out that is actually the history behind this idea of violating our Olsen vows, if lawful. And if our things are not lawful. Right. I mean, this actually goes forward into our tradition. In other words, if you make an oath and the thing you make an oath for is not lawful, then then your Christian duty is to not do it.
00:26:38:11 – 00:26:44:19
Michael Gewecke
If that made sense, it’s understand you that oath actually have serious period importance.
00:26:44:24 – 00:27:11:33
Clint Loveall
Just very quickly, a little background. I think you know this the word Sabbath, literally Saturday in Jewish holy tradition. Sabbath begins Friday evening at sundown last until Saturday evening at sundown. That is their holy time. That’s when they talk about refraining from work, etc.. Interestingly enough, in the Jewish tradition, lots of conversation about what you can and can’t do.
00:27:11:38 – 00:27:34:18
Clint Loveall
They have tended and I don’t mean this as an insult. They’ve tended to be very conscious of rules. And so they tended to wrestle with legalism. So they have these wonderful debates about whether you can turn a light switch or whether you can open your refrigerator and things that Christians have in different places do, like can you garden or can you not?
00:27:34:22 – 00:28:07:14
Clint Loveall
But they they have taken it further than we have, generally speaking, Christians in the aftermath of Jesus story and the resurrection Easter Sunday in the not probably right away, but in the first evolution of Christians, probably within a couple of decades, certainly by the end of the first century, that Sabbath concept had been shifted to what we call the Lord’s Day Sunday, the first day of the week rather than the last day of the week.
00:28:07:19 – 00:28:27:46
Clint Loveall
And then in Western tradition, the day began not at evening like it does in the Jewish tradition, but in the morning. So we end up thinking of the Sabbath as Sunday. This isn’t another interesting commandment. This is the only commandment. You I hope you know this. There are two places in the Old Testament where you find the Ten Commandments.
00:28:27:46 – 00:28:54:57
Clint Loveall
One is actually this toe, the other is Deuteronomy five. This is the only commandment that has significantly different tacks in the two versions. They both say don’t do anything on the Sabbath, keep it holy, work six days, rest to seven. But Exodus then gives the explanation from the creation story. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh God rested.
00:28:54:58 – 00:29:27:45
Clint Loveall
You two will keep the seventh day holy due to rather me says, Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought you out of Egypt. And it goes into that narrative. So it tells the exodus story and not the creation story. So they both have the same commandment. What they get, they’re two different ways. And the big general explanation for that is that Exodus is written by people who were more engaged in the kind of priestly religious life of lives of Israel.
00:29:27:50 – 00:29:52:23
Clint Loveall
So they reached into the creation story. Deuteronomy has it comes from a slightly different place that, again, the commandments don’t say different things, but it is curious that only in that one instance do we see that they have different explanations. So they both get to the same place, but they both take slightly different roads to get.
00:29:52:28 – 00:30:25:18
Michael Gewecke
Okay, so we talked about using the Lord’s name in vain. We talked about sort of the popular aspect of that. I want a quick start there for this as well. There is a general conversation that I hear all of the time in which people wrestle with and this idea just choose a particular example. I think it is broader, but why don’t young people come to church and instead choose to go to the hockey camp or choose to go to the volleyball camp or to the T-ball camp or whatever the thing is, right?
00:30:25:22 – 00:30:46:14
Michael Gewecke
And talking about how all of this Sunday schedules get filled up that I’ve talked to pastors who talk about that as like we’re pushing back the pagans of the church stage rule and so I think that’s like the popular conversation surrounding Sabbath. Why don’t we go to church on Sunday like we’re supposed to? And that is a really interesting, I think, conversation.
00:30:46:15 – 00:31:12:18
Michael Gewecke
I’ve talked to parents who engage that young people in our church who engage that conversation very seriously. And they struggle with that. What do we do with Sundays? Our kid either gets to play hockey or they don’t. That happens on that day. And so they wrestle with it. They try to make their way forward in it. That’s an important conversation and it needs to be had.
00:31:12:23 – 00:31:34:59
Michael Gewecke
I think, though, that it’s not necessarily when the whole of that conversation. I think it’s a small part of it. I think we miss and we should have on the screen. Clint asked me if we did and we don’t in Exodus hear that? It makes it clear during verse ten, the Sabbath is a Sabbath to the Lord your God on it.
00:31:35:04 – 00:32:05:33
Michael Gewecke
You shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals are your foreigner residing in your towns. Pause there for a second. In other words, Sabbath isn’t about whether your neighbor catches you mowing the lawn. Sabbath is about a society that says the foreigners within your bounds should not need to work on that day so that they can have a day of rest.
00:32:05:38 – 00:32:34:48
Michael Gewecke
It is a command to justice. It’s to say that as a society, God created in six days so that there was an abundance on the Sabbath. We should live in the kind of society that that abundance is, and now for everyone that lives within your borders. So it has a kind of expansive corporate nature to it. I do think that we are tempted to turn it into a rather legalistic command of the idea.
00:32:34:53 – 00:32:54:52
Michael Gewecke
You know, once again, don’t get caught mowing your lawn or picking plants or if you’re in the Jewish community, don’t be caught turning on the light. Your refrigerator, however far you want to go down that that trail. But here’s the thing. When you read through the New Testament, how many times does Jesus did accused of breaking the Sabbath?
00:32:54:57 – 00:33:15:08
Michael Gewecke
It happens all the time. He keeps eating things. These dots, both Stewart disciples are picking wheat that they’re not supposed to pick and they just taken to task on the Sabbath. And what is Jesus say over and over again? Maybe. Maybe the chief example of it, that Sabbath was bait for man. Man was not made for Sabbath. Right.
00:33:15:09 – 00:33:31:05
Michael Gewecke
And so Jesus even reorients the idea that Sabbath is not a kind of legalistic structure that we serve, but rather it’s a theological commitment that we will be the kind of people who live with space in our life.
00:33:31:10 – 00:34:09:09
Clint Loveall
The and the great disconnect there is that Jesus lives in a time and some people have carried this forward where they believe that Sabbath means to do nothing, and Jesus believes Sabbath means to do godly things. So it’s not an inactive day. It is a dedicated day. It is a day to step away from worldly things and to be particularly focused on godly things, to keep holy that that word means to consecrate.
00:34:09:09 – 00:34:41:01
Clint Loveall
And the word consecrate means to set apart. That’s all it means to put it aside as special. You don’t. Not to make it ordinary. Don’t treat it as common to consecrate that day. It is the furthest thing from I went to church. Now I’m done. And can do what I want. That’s that kind of thinking. And you can see how easily legalism creeps in here.
00:34:41:06 – 00:35:20:04
Clint Loveall
But it’s not that. And we often hear it as rest and isn’t it nice that the Bible tells us to take a nap? It is not that. It is not for our wellness. It’s not some kind of mental health break. It is relational. It is covenantal. It is to say there should be moments and you should be intentional in creating them where your focus and your activity or lack of activity are specifically designed and directed at honoring God.
00:35:20:09 – 00:35:55:07
Clint Loveall
So much bigger than do’s and don’ts. The do’s and don’ts matter, of course. But this commandment is so often reduced to the idea of what can I do and what can’t I do? But it takes the wrong metric to get there. And I think that’s what we see in those controversies and conflicts with Jesus. We see a people who were coming at a good thing from a bad angle, and Jesus corrects them over and over and over.
00:35:55:11 – 00:36:24:05
Michael Gewecke
So there’s a few different senses. I’ll be really brief here. There’s a few different senses in which I think we see. Sabbath is not a kind of construct for what you do one day, the week it actually gets taken amongst the people of Israel and it gets written into the the entire fabric of their lives. It becomes a theological principle that they have that you work for the major, the of time, and you set aside consecrated time for God.
00:36:24:09 – 00:36:53:15
Michael Gewecke
That that that’s the pattern that one lives your life by. So that exists from the highest corporate end to the individual. It starts at the highest end. I don’t know if you’ve all heard the Jubilee, but every certain number of years, 49 I, I was 99% sure that that’s right. But 49 that’s good. So every 49 years, essentially all loans get reset and property that you may have mortgaged out now comes back to you.
00:36:53:25 – 00:37:20:24
Michael Gewecke
The idea being that no one is in a position where you’re financial mistakes will impact every generation that follows is the kind of you have a certain period of time where you’re free to live and then there’s a reset that happens on a national cosmic social level. But then you have the rules related to farming that I think are really interesting because they touch both black corporate and the individual.
00:37:20:24 – 00:37:51:41
Michael Gewecke
Farmers were told, You need to leave a certain amount of your crops at the edge of your field on the harvest. It, and you need to make that available so that the poor can come to your field. And that way they can be fed. That becomes a a kind of corporate way to ensure that the one who owns the field benefits from that to a majority degree, but that there’s some margin left so that those who don’t have would still be able to eat.
00:37:51:41 – 00:37:58:54
Michael Gewecke
And so that I think, is a practical kind of outcome that comes from this same kind of Sabbath thinking.
00:37:58:55 – 00:38:29:40
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and you may know this, they also practice a communal Sabbath every seventh year. The A field was to be fallow. You could work a field for six years. The seventh year you were to leave it, and the poor and the alien and the neighbor were able to go and pick anything that grew there. So. So there was this idea, even at the creation level of specific rest that benefits other people.
00:38:29:40 – 00:38:57:43
Clint Loveall
So this is woven in to a nation much more than yes, it was probably good the land. But that wasn’t it wasn’t why they did it. They did it because God commanded them to do it. Maybe the clearest version we see of this is the Exodus story of the Manna, right? They they could gather manna, except what Sabbath they could get a double portion on.
00:38:57:48 – 00:39:25:55
Clint Loveall
We’ll call it Thursday. I don’t know what they called it, and they would have enough for the day. And that, as I think the call of Sabbath is, think about what that means. You’re not going to play in a field. You’re not going to go gather food tomorrow. What does that demand? It demands trust that God will provide.
00:39:26:00 – 00:39:48:03
Clint Loveall
What is it mean to say, I’ve got a lot of work to be done, but I’m going to intentionally take a day not to do it, and I’m going to focus on God that day. Ten God be trusted with the outcomes of my labor as a nation and as individual. Sabbath was a sign of trust. We put our faith ultimately not in our efforts.
00:39:48:03 – 00:40:09:43
Clint Loveall
There’s a time for work. We put our trust in the action of God that has promise to be with us, lead us, guide us and provide for us. And I think, you know, there’s some really good upsides today. And again, I we could make this more about that because I do think it carries some lessons for us.
00:40:09:48 – 00:40:37:43
Michael Gewecke
So just two quick things as we make our way towards Westminster. First of all, I was surprised I learned this week how much the earliest reformed believers read this commandment from the perspective not of this life, but the next. It blew my mind. It so much emphasis was that the Sabbath was to be for us an image of the spiritual reality of being with God.
00:40:37:48 – 00:41:01:10
Michael Gewecke
And it sort of connected for me as to why, as Protestants over time, Sabbath has become less and less of a defined reality is because at the very earliest part of the Reformation, they were already shifting Sabbath away from a day in the week in the way that they thought and talked about it to a spiritual reality of being present with God.
00:41:01:15 – 00:41:29:57
Michael Gewecke
And how that shifted. And I thought that was really interesting. I think there are some Protestants today who are doing some really interesting work trying to re-imagine this. I just want to. It’s not really a recommendation, but if you’re interested in reading of someone in contemporary Christian circles trying to think through Sabbath in ways that are applicable of the book, I’d recommend for you to read is the ruthless elimination of HURRY.
00:41:30:01 – 00:41:58:22
Michael Gewecke
It’s called the Ruthless Elimination of Henry. I’m not suggesting that the book is some kind of seminal statement on a contempt temporary reading of of Sabbath, but it is someone who’s thinking about Sabbath and trying to take it seriously in their in their individual spiritual practice. And it may be helpful to you in that. I want to point out, I know it may strike us because it’s, you know, a few words in the midst of a longer thing.
00:41:58:22 – 00:42:19:27
Michael Gewecke
But the first day, the week ever since. And so to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath, you can see how that’s that the arc of those words is pointed to eternity. And that’s actually a very reformed emphasis looking at the Sabbath. Okay, here’s your forbids.
00:42:19:31 – 00:42:43:17
Clint Loveall
Omissions of duties required careless, negligent, unprofitable performing of them. Profitable in that case does not mean make money from them being weary, profane ing the day by idleness and doing that which in itself is simple, which is fascinating because we tend to think idleness is the point. So are reformers understood? It is not the point doing that, which in itself is sinful.
00:42:43:17 – 00:43:05:51
Clint Loveall
Needless words, words, thoughts about worldly employment and recreations. If There were standards about not doing things like basketball with your friends. This is the that’s where they came. The idea of worldly employment set apart. There are other days to play ball with your friends. That’s not this day. There are other days to do those things. This day is different.
00:43:05:56 – 00:43:40:09
Clint Loveall
And just be honest. Christians have we’ve largely lost that. I mean, we don’t we don’t carry that. I don’t think you can grow up. I don’t think you can grow up reasonably Jewish and not understand the importance of Sabbath. Right. I mean, it is woven in in a way that we don’t know what to do with it. And so we whatever we do with Sabbath, I think, will be trying to recapture some of the best parts of it because we’ve largely abandoned.
00:43:40:13 – 00:44:05:06
Michael Gewecke
I agree. And I would only add, I think it’s not just recapturing in a seven day schedule. That’s where I think we get off track. I think when you look at Sabbath from an Old Testament perspective, it has a claim over your entire life. And so I think that’s the invitation I would have for you to consider is we live in a culture in which, you know, some some families have this culture.
00:44:05:06 – 00:44:28:54
Michael Gewecke
We do one vacation a year, right? And I said, you know, we recreate one time a year. I think a Sabbath understanding is that there’s some patterns in your life in which you set aside normal for the sake of doing different kind of work, which is different from are we going to the Black Hills or not this year?
00:44:28:58 – 00:44:51:13
Michael Gewecke
You see that distinction. And I think the question is, do you in your life ever have time when you do spiritual work? And if your answer to that is no, Sabbath is an invitation to explore what that would look like for you. And it could be on lots of different timelines. I think that’s why I thought.
00:44:51:18 – 00:45:09:31
Clint Loveall
Okay, we’ll kind of let you have your your do’s and don’ts if you want to share any of them, share those with your neighbors or bring them up or whatever you want to do. We’re running a little long. We want to be conscious of your time. But thank you all for your time tonight. Thanks again. The folks that fed us, we’re very grateful.
00:45:09:36 – 00:45:28:06
Clint Loveall
Have a good week and we will be seeing you. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast. We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have, lots of things you can listen to.
00:45:28:06 – 00:45:34:19
Clint Loveall
We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing, and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.
00:45:34:24 – 00:45:53:16
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.
00:45:53:29 – 00:46:26:54
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you. If you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube dot com slash AFP, PC Spirit Lake. There you can comment and engage with us or if you would prefer to do that without going to YouTube, you can actually just click the link in the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.
00:46:27:05 – 00:46:36:10
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.