As in any profession, being a minister has its joys and its sorrows. It is a unique position, because while it is generally seen as a calling of God, it is more and more at the mercy of the people. I shouldn't say that it is more and more at the mercy of the people because it has always been that way. Back in the days of the Old Testament the ministers were called prophets. These days we use the word prophet to describe a person who predicts the future. But in the broadest sense of the word, the concept is that one is a messenger of God, that is, one who speaks for God.

Of course, this is a very sensitive and dangerous position to be in. It is saying a lot when a person is called to speak for God. As a result, prophets generally didn't have a very long shelf life. Jesus Himself referred to the fact that, historically, those who truly spoke for God usually were killed. Remember the words of Jesus in Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!"

Of course, there also were what we might call the "generic" prophets or messengers. They would be like the man who was called "Paladin" on the Western television series years ago. The title of the series was "Have Gun, Will Travel."

Throughout the ages there have been those who have been what we might call "prophets for hire." They claimed to be speaking for God, when in truth they would basically say what the people who were supporting them wanted them to say. I don't know if you have noticed, but the general tenor of the preaching of the true messengers as it is recorded in scripture is usually only marginally comforting and affirming. Usually the messages of these messengers was very negative and, in today's language, really judgmental. I suppose that should come as no surprise, because when you are speaking on behalf of the Judge of all the earth, the message you present will more likely than not be judgmental.

In the Old Testament, the people usually hired messengers who would tell them what they wanted to hear. In these latter days, history is more and more repeating itself in this respect.

I often use the illustration of Eve at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to illustrate what I am talking about. When the serpent said that if you ate of the tree you wouldn't die, that was affirming and positive. But, of course, it was a lie. God had said that if they ate of the tree they would die. That was anything but affirming and, of course, it was negative but it was true.

The incredible thing about human nature then and now is that people are less interested in whether something is true or false than if it is negative or positive. These days ministers of the gospel are not being sawed in two like Isaiah or thrown into a pit like Jeremiah, but they are not being hired for some churches for the simple reason that the interview committee doesn't agree with their message.

Of course, this is all right if we are going to use the corporate model for hiring people. The Human Resources Department interviews the job prospect. It takes into account the person's education, experience, age, sex, and, of course, the résumé. I can understand this. But when it comes to someone whose responsibility it is to speak for God then it seems to me that there should be another criteria. After all, should it be the résumé or should it be whether or not the person can be trusted to speak the Word of God whatever the cost?

It is incredible how in the great war of evil against good that evil has portrayed itself as good and made good look evil. This was the case when the war began in heaven, and this was the pitch that the devil made to Eve at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is still the case today.

In the times in which we live it is the murderer who is seen as the victim. Perversion is now, to some, becoming a civil right. Those who speak the truth in love are considered to be pharisaical, legalist, close-minded, judgmental or bigoted.

I suppose that the thing that makes it of universal importance is that all of this represents a distortion of reality. The reality is that God is just and loving and Satan is just the opposite. The truth is that it is the devil who comes to destroy and Jesus who came to save. However, it is also true that, because the devil will one day launch a suicide attack against the city of God, he and those who are allied with him will be destroyed. That is the truth. That is reality.

Down through the ages God has graciously sent messengers to unmask the lies of the devil. 1 John 3:8 "He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." The problem is that, because of the perversity of the heart of mankind, people prefer to believe a lie than to believe the truth.

The other day I was thinking that the devil has been almost totally successful in turning the truth of God into a lie. Though by nature we resent the truth that God has given us through his messengers, we seem to be almost totally ignorant of the ways that the devil uses to put us down, to intimidate us, and to otherwise blackmail us into being on his side of the conflict.

In another sermon I related how it was Sabbath when the President of the United States was being impeached by the House of Representatives and on the same day the armed forces again bombed Iraq. I arrived at my Sabbath School class a few minutes late. The teacher was already into the lesson. I whispered to my wife and asked her if the teacher had mentioned what was going on. She said, yes, he had, but he said that he didn't want to talk about it.

I have a conviction that, though we don't need to get involved in politics, we definitely need to learn what the Bible has to say about what is going on in the world. It seems to me that if we are afraid in the context of the body of Christ to talk about what is going on in the world in the light of the scripture, then we are simply allowing Dan Rather to be the one who helps us decide what is right and wrong.

We have all but surrendered the field to the enemy. Our perspectives are being molded by the television, radio, and newspaper when as the church of God our perspectives should be rooted and grounded in the Word of God. As long as we, as ministers and teachers, won't tackle real life for our members then it will be done by those whose world view may be 180 degrees out of synch with the will of God.

We are being bombarded by media messages while our preaching and teaching, instead of confronting error, is more and more giving in to what is commonly called "political correctness." As Christians we must not be afraid to stand up and be counted. If we cannot survive these days and be faithful to the Word, then there will be no way that we will stand firm when the issue is, will we be able to buy or sell when the economic boycott is leveled against those who choose to stand for truth.

I believe that, as far as the majority is concerned, the devil will win--not because God was not stronger, but because the members of the church simply went with the flow. I have entitled this sermon, "Familiarity Breeds Contempt."

You know, of course, what the third commandment is: "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" (Exodus 20:7). There is no doubt that this commandment has to do with swearing. At least that is the way that we have tended to look at it. I am sorry to tell you that many Christians have grown careless in this respect. What does it mean to take the name of the Lord in vain? I looked up the meaning of the words for this text in the Hebrew. It seems to me that this text is saying more than just referring to the way that we talk. The deeper meaning seems to be about an attitude. The commandment is basically saying that we should not be disrespectful and irreverent.

Life is about hierarchy. That is, it has a top to bottom flow. Only when we understand this will life have any real relevance and meaning. It has always been the devil's purpose to take this vertical approach to relationships and make it horizontal. It is his purpose to confuse the sacred with the profane and the profane with the sacred. In the hierarchy of human existence God is to be the head, then come our parents and family, and then after that the rest of society. Our parents and family come next because the fifth commandment follows the first four commandments, which are the ones that tell us how we must relate to God.

After God, our first obligation is to respect our parents because they were used by God to create us. It is a pity, yet it is no wonder that this generation probably has less respect for its parents than any that has gone before. We refuse to bear responsibilities for our own lives or to confess our own sins, yet we have decided that our parents are responsible for our sins, and as such, we publicly confess the sins that we feel they have committed against us.

The point is that life cannot have meaning when everything is the same. When a hundred-dollar bill is seen as being on a par with a penny, the money is worthless. So in the same way, when the things of God are the same as the things of man. When the private things are public and the things that are to be public are now seen as being private, then we are breaking the third commandment and the principles that it stands for.

Speaking of the private things being made public and the public things being made private, I heard a minister point out that sex, which was meant to be private, is now public, and religion, which is to be corporate, is now seen as being private. Surely we live in an upside-down age.

Living in a democracy hasn't helped us to appreciate the difference between the sacred and the profane and especially the sovereignty and majesty of God. In a democracy the people rule, and though we are thankful that we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it must be one which is kept from anarchy, and this can only be accomplished by law. This is why I am worried about all of the polls and surveys they are taking these days, because polls and surveys are not about laws but about personal ideas and feelings. I don't need to tell you that, though we appreciate ideals and feelings, they are highly subjective and very unstable.

Though our government is a democratic process, it is one that is based on law. It is the law that protects us, if you please, from ourselves. Something happened to our culture in this country. It may have been some time in the making, but it began to manifest itself in the sixties when we had the phenomena of the hippies. The hippies were basically anti-authoritarian and anti-law. It was at that time that we heard them say that the police where pigs.

Though the revolution of the sixties was not an overthrow of the government, it was very much an overthrow of society and the norms of society as we had known them. Whereas in the past the law had protected the rights of the innocent, now the law would begin to protect the rights of the guilty. The laws that had served to protect us from pornography and filth would now be used to protect pornography and filth.

If you want to read an interesting book, read Slouching Towards Gomorrah by Robert Bork. When you see what has happened to society in the last forty years, you will be quick to understand that these same happenings have affected the church. The church, which was to be a place where we could be safe from the corruption of society, has in some ways been infiltrated by the Trojan Horse of the humanistic and hedonistic society.

What has this all to do with the third commandment? Only this, and that is that in the minds of the masses, God is now just one of the boys Who is dependent upon our vote and support for His existence. When the truth about God is presented in all its glory and splendor there are many who, when they discover that He is not who they thought He was, simply say, "Well, my god is not that way," or they simply say that they don't believe in God anymore.

This generation will play the game as long as you let them make up the rules as they go along. But when someone steps forward and says, "Here are the rules. Who wants to play?" then the majority leave the field and either go up to the stands or leave the stadium altogether.

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The point is that we must not try to bring God down to our level. You can recognize what a person's concept of God is in two ways: One is how they talk about Him, and the other is how they worship Him.

The underlying issue in the third commandment is not just whether we swear or not, but it must include how we talk about God. And that is, do we talk about Him with reverence and respect? I realize that we have wanted to understand Him better so that we could get nearer to Him, but we must be careful, because you remember that the nearer we get to God, the more dangerous it becomes. We must not forget the story of Moses. God told him to take off his shoes because, with God nearby even the ground becomes holy. This means that as we get near to Him we must not go faster, but slower and more carefully. We must not forget what the commandant says--that God will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.

I have heard it said that we are now speaking in a kind of shorthand. I don't know how many words the English language has, but one thing I know is that we are using fewer and fewer of them, and not only that, we are using words that have had one established meaning and giving them a meaning that is just the opposite. Don't forget what I said earlier. The devil knows that we are lost when we can no longer distinguish the sacred from the profane, and then it will follow that we will not be able to distinguish right from wrong.

The devil knows that it is probably expecting too much that the people of God be in favor of evil and against good, but he knows that if he can simply bring them to the point that they cannot distinguish right from wrong, he will have accomplished his purpose. Inasmuch as we cannot effectively convey ideas without words, then if he is going to make it difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, he will have to corrupt the language. This means that if he can bring us to the point where we have to use the same words to talk about God as we do about the things that are not sacred, then we begin to get confused as to which is which.

In the past couple of years there are two words that are being used to describe almost everything and those words are "cool" and "awesome." These words are examples of shorthand words. They are now used as substitutes for a host of words. I am not saying that we must not use "cool" and "awesome," but I do feel that we should not use them to describe sacred things. The reason is obvious and that is it makes the sacred things and the profane things indistinguishable.

I have not completely resolved this challenge. We have all been affected by the culture and it has even gotten into our church life. I think that in general we should chose our words carefully before we speak when we are about to speak about things having to do with God. If angels cover their faces in His presence, should not we speak of Him with reverence and respect?

I think of the text in James 3:5-10, "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be."

I am not telling you this to say that we should not talk openly and freely to God. But inasmuch as we can rise no higher than our concept of God, what I am saying is that unless our concept of God is growing in respect and reverence, it will be difficult if not impossible for us to come up out of the pit into which we are fallen. It comes as no surprise then that if we talk to someone without much respect, we will reflect this disrespect by other things we do as well.

I saw an issue of a national newsmagazine dedicated to the way that we dress these days. The front cover showed a man coming out of church dressed in shorts and flip-flops. Personally, I don't understand why a person would want to go to church in anything but their best. Notice I do not specify what the best should be--only that it should be their best. No one would think of going to a fine restaurant or to a banquet in shorts and flip-flops. What is the point? What is the message? How we dress on an occasion tells how we feel about it. I am not saying that we should all dress the same, but only scripture teaches that God deserves the best.

While we are considering the matter of respect and reverence, I believe that it is relevant to consider the matter of modesty, (although I am not sure that this age knows what modesty is. When girls start dressing like boys and boys like girls, then the protocols of modesty in society lose their meaning.)

I wish that someone would get us men together sometime and talk about modesty. I also wish that the daughters of God would get together with the other daughters of God sometime and talk about modesty.

I was having Sabbath dinner one time. There was a young married woman there. She was alone; her husband was traveling. The matter of how Christians should dress came up. I will never forget what she said. She said that she wanted to dress so that she would be desirable to other men. I don't need to tell you that her home broke up soon after that. I wish the women of God would get together and discuss whether it is the will of God, for His glory and for the honor of their womanhood, for them to appear "desirable." What does that mean? I know what it means to a man.

Should a woman go to church on Sabbath dressed so that she is desirable to other men? Should a man go to church on Sabbath so that he is attractive to other women? I could take that question one step further. Should a man or a woman go to church on Sabbath to appear attractive to members of the opposite sex even if we are talking about their spouses or should we be going to the house of God for other reasons?

The matter of how a Christian will dress is very relevant to their relationship to God. If we feel that we must be sex objects when we come into the house of God, we have surely lost the ability to discern the sacred from the profane and should repent.

I am convicted that, unless we discover who God is and what is expected of us when we come into His presence, it will corrupt not only our relationship with Him, but also every other relationship that we have in the family and in society. We have generally lost respect for one another because we first lost respect for God. A person who has a right concept of respect and reverence for God will respect and reverence the other relationships in their lives.

There is a great emphasis being placed these days in being vulnerable. I looked up the meaning of the word in the Thesaurus. Listen to these synonyms: unprotected, unguarded, defenseless, exposed, susceptible, too accessible, assailed, and naked. When I saw what the word really meant I realized that the only one that we could ever be safely vulnerable with would be God. The reason for this would be that He knows all about us anyway, and besides, the scripture teaches that we should not try to hide anything from Him.

I believe that familiarity breeds contempt. One of the reasons that we have so little respect for one another is that we know too much about each other. I recognize, of course, that we should share with each other; the scripture even tells us that we are to bear one another's burdens. I believe also that we are called upon to share our testimony with each other as long as that testimony will strengthen the other person. I say, as long as the testimony will strengthen the other person. This must be a condition for sharing.

You probably heard the story of the man that was walking one day. He came to a high bridge. Out in the middle of the bridge was a person with one leg over the side about to jump over the side. The stranger ran to the person and said, "Friend, don't do it. Come, let's talk about it." So the story goes that they walked off the bridge talking about whatever it was. Soon they came back to the same spot and they both jumped!

The point is that there is a testimony that helps and there is one that makes things worse. We must understand the difference. Personally, I am not comfortable with knowing as much as I can about everybody I can. Familiarity breeds contempt. Besides losing respect for each other, there is another problem that can result from knowing too much about a person, and that is illustrated in the story of the three men who one day were playing golf together. Somehow the subject of a person's secret vice came up. One of the men said, "Well, speaking of having a vice, I suppose that you could say that my vice is that I like to put a few dollars on the horses. I win some and I lose some." The second fellow said, "Well, I guess if it could be said that I have a vice, it is that I like to drink. Sometimes, I guess, I drink too much." The third guy confessed, "Fellows, my vice is gossip, and I can hardly wait to get out of here!"

And so we live in an age that calls on us to be vulnerable with each other, but in the process we do not think more of each other, and we even run the risk of losing our self-respect. We must be very careful with small groups in this respect. Small groups can very well be places where the weak are being exploited. Even as a pastor I must be careful how much I allow myself to hear about someone's inner life.

You may not agree with me, but if we could encourage each other to cast our cares on God, and then if we would do it on a regular basis with honesty and openness, we would be the healthier for it--emotionally and spiritually.

The matter of reverence deserves our attention. Again, like the matter of modesty, I fear that this generation doesn't have reverence for very many things. I think I remember how this began to come about. We thought it was daring to do and say things that we had never done or said before. I remember how the change came to church. We had a young minister. We loved the way that he did things in new ways.

Now, I believe that it is OK to do things in new ways provided that the new ways are the right ways. I am sure that many think that there are not right ways and wrong ways to do things--only different ways. As they say, different strokes for different folks. I know that we all see things from differing vantage points, but we must be careful least our diversity creates illusions that simply don't exist.

You remember the old story of the three blind men who were describing an elephant. One felt his tail and said that the elephant was like a rope; the next one felt the elephant's trunk and said that the elephant was like a hose. The third one felt the elephant's leg and said that the elephant was like a tree. Of course, they were all wrong. Our differing points of view should help us to flesh out reality, not fantasy.

Well, back to the matter of doing church in new ways. I would like to ask you a question. Have the new ways that have come in in recent years generally made us more reverent in church or less? I guess I could speak for myself, and I would have to answer that for me, at least, definitely less reverent.

When I pastored an academy church I always had a children's story. There can be a problem with the children's story time and that is that we often act like children. I don't need to tell you that children are not by nature reverent in church. We must be careful that we don't set a tone in the children's story that somehow misrepresents reverence or make it difficult to practice.

I know that some churches have tried to solve this by having a children's church. We must be careful or the children's church could come to have more in common with Sesame Street than teaching the children how to worship a Holy God. People who are not taught the principles and significance of reverence in their childhood will find it difficult later on.

Friends, the challenge we face is how to make sacred things understandable without making them profane. There are children's Bibles these days depicted in a cartoon motif. There are even videos for children that are trying to teach them Bible stories that mix science fiction with Scriptural truth.

You might say, "Pastor O'Ffill, lighten up. You used to be a child once yourself. Let's let children be children." Friends, in dealing with the things having to do with the holy, we must ever study how to represent God as He really is. To lower the things of God to the level of cartoon characters, puppets and clowns is not to lead our children to the truth, but away from it.

I am convinced that we must rediscover the meaning of reverence and then practice it, or we will not be able to understand truth as God has revealed it to us in His Word. In our desire to be friendly in church, we can be irreverent if we are not careful.

Speaking of being friendly in church, we must not forget that the church is not a place where we come to be friendly but to worship God. The problem is that we are usually so preoccupied with our own things during the week that we have only a few hours on Sabbath to fit in things having to do with the two great commandments: To love the Lord our God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. Though these concepts are compatible, we may find that in loving each other we can leave God out. However, to truly worship God will not mean leaving our brother and sister out of the loop, though it might mean that we will have to give them some other time that is not between eleven and twelve in the sanctuary.

I have noticed that when a person has been a Catholic that you don't usually have to teach them how to be reverent and respectful. I have noticed that former Catholics will come to church and the first thing that they do is kneel down and pray right there where they are going to sit. You have probably seen them do it.

Maybe one of the challenges that we have in bringing reverence to our worship services is that, during the time for the Sabbath School classes, it may well be anything but reverent and worshipful. There are often so many Sabbath School classes in the sanctuary that you can hardly hear your own class teacher, much less others that may wish to participate.

If we don't have a reverent atmosphere between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m., it will be difficult to be reverent at 11:00 a.m. I might also say that if our lives haven't been reverent and respectful to God and to our fellow human beings during the week, then what we do on Sabbath will probably only be superficial and even insincere.

This generation has lost respect for God and for each other. This familiarity has resulted in contempt for the sacred and the holy, be it in respect to our holy God or the intimate relationship between husband and wife. When respect and reverence are gone, then life has no meaning.

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." If your new car is "cool," then God must be described with other words. If your vacation was "awesome," then aren't we setting ourselves up to confuse a hundred-dollar bill with a penny if we refer to God as awesome?

Some time ago I was in a Sabbath School class. The teacher referred to the love of God as scandalous. He asked us what we thought about using that word. I told him that if what the President of the United States did was scandalous, then I didn't see how we could use that same word to describe the love of God. We must not forget that the words we use to describe something indicate how we feel about it. The greatest danger of the games that are being played with our language is that we can no longer distinguish the sacred from the profane and after that comes truth and error.

My friend, God is calling on us, His children, not to take this name in vain. We can rise no higher than our concept of God. Isaiah saw a vision of God, high and lifted up. "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."

God is calling those who call themselves by His name to come up to a higher standard. We must resist the culture in which everything is brought down to the same low level. Not until we see God for what He is and relate ourselves to Him as He deserves will our relationship with Him be what it ought to be. But also until this happens, our relationship to each other and even our self-respect will continue to slide. It is true, familiarity breeds contempt.