Please stand as we recite The Shema together.
The Shema
Hear O Israel!
The Lord is our God – the Lord Alone.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart,
With all your soul,
And with all your might,
And love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.
Thank You, Lord. Please be seated.

1 Sam 28:10, And Saul vowed to her by the Lord, saying, "As the Lord lives, there shall no punishment come upon you for this thing."
This morning we return to the consideration of what it means to use to the Resplendent and Awesome and Glorious Name of the Almighty Lord God, Jehovah, Yahweh in any manner which is other than honoring and filled with respect and reverence and praise. To use the Name of The Lord needs to always engage the entirety of our being with the complete knowledge that He is incomprehensibly beyond any scope of our ability to explain and express a complete sense of heart-felt gratitude and adoration.
Please open to Ps 50:14-17. Here we have the Psalmist detailing the precision required in our dedicated and consecrated consideration of what it means to God for His people to be honoring in the pronouncement of His glorious Name.
Ps 50:14-17, "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, And pay your vows to the Most High; And call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me." But to the wicked God says, "What right have you to tell of My statutes, And to take My covenant in your mouth? "For you hate discipline, And you cast My words behind you. 
For those who have complete and utmost regard for The Lord, there will be that reciprocal working of grace and mercy and salvation that will be our protection and our security for all the eternal ages upon ages to come. At the same time, those who have no true use for God, other than as an object of superstitious reflection, will find themselves at a complete loss of any sense of reality when they are brought face to face with Him at His judgment seat. They will receive the righteous and holy result of casting aspersions and platitudinal jabs at The Lord God Almighty. They will have to swallow all those defiant and deprecating words that were hurled against His Holy Being. They will be dejectedly forced to recount all the foolish and vicious words of their spiteful mouths. This will be along with choking on the bile and acidic reflux of their bitterness and their defamed and denigrated horrible calamity for age after age after age. 
The Prophet Ezekiel adds to this intensifying deliberation as to the careless and wonton use of the Name of God by any who would try to use it in the course of other than holy and praiseworthy honor. Please turn to Ezek 39:7+8, as we will take to heart that God will never allow any person to mock or disparage that which is Holy and Just and Righteous altogether. There will be that Day of Judgment in which any person or even nation, who profanes the Name of the Lord and reality of Who He is, will receive the righteous sentence of God’s perfect Holiness.
Ezek 39:7+8, "And My holy name I shall make known in the midst of My people Israel; and I shall not let My holy name be profaned anymore. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. "Behold, it is coming and it shall be done," declares the Lord God. "That is the day of which I have spoken. 
Our Lord Jesus Christ brings to the forefront the entire attitude of reverence and awe for God that should be part of our every day, moment by moment means of referencing and expression of the Name of the Lord. He details the manner of our call upon Him as the witness and the authority of our oaths and promises. It is so easy for humanity to give such a false expression of how little they really consider God in the way in which they give verbal pronouncement involving oaths and statements and promises and vows. 
Please open to Matt 5:33-37, In this passage, we find ourselves challenged by Our Lord in terms of how we voice our promises with everyone in our spheres of influence. We need to be especially careful within our homes and in our work places.  
Matt 5:33-37, "Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the Lord.' "But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. "Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. "But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; and anything beyond these is of evil. 
When we make a promise, we should not do it with the name of the Lord or any other of the divine appellations of God attached to it. We are to so reverence the Holiness and the Awesomeness of The Lord God Almighty that we do not want to bring Him down into the futility of our human faithlessness. 
What I mean by this is that we will often make a vow or a promise with the every intention of following through with it. We may tell ourselves and others that we will absolutely do something, with the best of intentions to make it happen. 
It is imperative that we never tie God’s Glorious and Majestic Name in any fashion or manner that would denigrate His Excellency, as was done by Saul in this morning’s passage. God is perfect in everything He does and in every promise that He makes. All that is of repute and honor and magnificence is set in Him. To bring down that reverence into the realm of human error and frailty is something that is to be avoided at all costs on our part.
As Jesus commands, let our yes be yes and our no be no, but all of it needs to be in the knowledge that it is our word and our intention and our effort and our obedience, not the Lord’s. We are not to tie His Name to the weakness of our hands. We may fully and absolutely plan to follow through on all that we say we will do, but things happen at times which prevent our complete carry through. 
That is never the case with God. What He says He will do, He does! What He puts forth as a promise absolutely is fulfilled. When He speaks, the whole of creation responds and is acquiescent unto His will in operation. 
The same is not true of mankind, with the exception of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of course. His word given was the Word of God and was ever fulfilled and trustworthy. The rest of humanity however, even with the greatest of intentions, fall dreadfully short in the course of our promised offering of vows, and oaths, and manifested obligatory pledges. 
Brother James intervenes on this point for us in James 4:13-16. Please turn ahead to that passage for a moment. 
James 4:13-16, Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that." But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 
It is apparent that what we open our mouths to say, with the greatest of every intention to fulfill, is as nothing! We do not know what tomorrow brings. We may promise the greatest manner of our work to accomplish this or that, and yet on the morrow we may be incapacitated, distracted, imprisoned, or dead. We do not know. We have no ability to absolutely say that our word is as connected to the accomplishment of our oaths as is the Lord’s. 
That is why we must never tack the wondrous and awesome name of God in any measure upon that which is to be done by the hands of mankind. The best that we can say, with all our hearts is that if the Lord wills, we will do this or try to do that or be here or there or wherever. Only God knows what tomorrow brings and accordingly we need to have that reality fully embedded in the course of our talk and our walk on this earth.
As a further caution, of which I have been guilty in my own life, we need to be absolutely careful of our use of even the phrase “if he Lord wills.” We need to mean it if we say it. We dare not use this as a means of bypassing that which we have no intention of fulfilling. We dare not say “if The Lord wills,” as an excuse not to do something we have promised to do, thereby shifting blame upon God for our failure to do that which we never even intended to accomplish!
Our Lord, in Matt 23:16-22, further delineates the need for all of us to be so very careful in the manner of our use of oaths and swearing in the terms of invoking the Name of The Lord God Almighty. There needs to be utmost and sincere consideration given as to what we are truly saying in the course of our conversations. We need to be cognizant of what is represented in the vocalizations that we put forth in the utterances of our mouths. We are so flippant and unthinking as we carelessly cast forth those words that our society uses so foully and viciously in its defiant stance of besmirching all that is holy and righteous in the working power of God. 
Matt 23:16-22, "Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.' "You fools and blind men; which is more important, the gold, or the temple that sanctified the gold? "And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering upon it, he is obligated.' "You blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? "Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it. "And he who swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who dwells within it. "And he who swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it. 
One of the greatest examples of the manner in which mankind so carelessly and manifestly tries to make promises without any sense of what is truly at stake is recorded in the 26th Chapter of the Book of Matthew. Let us begin reading at verse 31 through verse 35.
Matt 26:31-35, Then Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, 'I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.'  "But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee."  But Peter answered and said to Him, "Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away." Jesus said to him, "Truly I say to you that this very night, before a cock crows, you shall deny Me three times."  Peter said to Him, "Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You." All the disciples said the same thing too. 
We know that Peter had the greatest of intentions to follow the Lord wherever He led. Peter was absolutely committed to his Rabbi, his teacher, his friend. He truly meant, as did the rest of the disciples what he vowed before the Lord. This can be taken as is any human oath, with the recognition that circumstances and situations can change and dissuade the follow through that is voiced. Jesus knew what was going to take place and made it known to all His disciples, especially and particularly to Peter, His dear disciple. 
Let us now pick up the aftereffects, when Jesus was arrested, and was being scourged and accused and defamed. The disciples were in utter shock at what was happening and they were in absolute fear for their own lives, seeing that their Lord was being readied for crucifixion. Verses 69-75, not very much later in the same evening, details what happened to Peter’s vow to be beside his Lord no matter what the cost.
Matt 26:69-75, Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a certain servant-girl came to him and said, "You too were with Jesus the Galilean." But he denied it before them all, saying, "I do not know what you are talking about." And when he had gone out to the gateway, another servant-girl saw him and said to those who were there, "This man was with Jesus of Nazareth." And again he denied it with an oath, "I do not know the man." And a little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, "Surely you too are one of them; for the way you talk gives you away." Then he began to curse and swear, "I do not know the man!" And immediately a cock crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, "Before a cock crows, you will deny Me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly. 
No matter how great we may hold to our intentions, we need to be absolutely careful in the course of the vows that we make. Peter certainly and absolutely intended for Jesus to have a friend there with Him through anything that took place. Peter fully intended with the depth of his human heart to stand with his Rabbi and face all that this world might bring forth against the both of them, locked together by a commitment greater than any other human condition. That was Peter’s promise for what little it was eventually worth when the charges were made and the cruelty of humanity crashed down on the willing and perfect Lamb of God.
Accordingly, we want to recognize that only God, in all His Majesty and Perfection and Honor and Omnipotence and Omniscience can make a promise that will stand the test of everything that could be launched against it. What God says will happen, will take place! What God puts forth as a promise of blessing will abound in measures beyond all comprehension! Only God can make a vow that will stand the test of eternity! 
We close with the gloriousness of this truth as presented by the Writer to the Hebrews in Heb 6:16-18. Because of the faithfulness of the Word of God, we have the eternal hope that is certain and sure, now and evermore. The only pure and sure and eternal oath is that from God.
Heb 6:16-18, For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us. 
So be it and amen and amen.
	
This morning’s benediction is Ps 19:14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.