Published on Facebook, December 1, 2009

By Bud Powell

Isa 28:17 Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

De 25:15 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Sinful men would hope that there is no ultimate standard of truth or morality. But God delights in judgment; He delights in measuring things. He knows how long, how wide, how heavy, how straight, how honest the words are. He put the sun, moon, and stars in the sky on the Fourth Day of creation so that man would have the means of measuring time, to seek wisdom and knowledge. [Psalm 90:12]

One of the measures is the use of the name of God. The Third Commandment is "Thou shalt 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."

How a man uses the name of God will indicate how he uses all other words. If he is light and vain in the Name of God--this Word above all Words--he will be light and vain in the rest of his speech. When men no longer take words seriously and their meaning seriously, then their promises will mean nothing, their threats will be empty, and their lives will be empty. Contracts, covenants, marriage vows, church vows, promises and integrity of all kinds fall to the ground in the mud of unbelief and faithlessness.

In commenting on this command not to forswear [break our word], Jesus said that our yea is to be yea and our nay to be nay. As sinful men, on great occasions we require oaths because we are trying to make words mean something. This is right and proper in our present sinful state, but it is an indirect indictment upon us.

But if men are faithless and blasphemers, their vows will mean nothing. They will swear to preach to word of God, and preach lies and vain dreams. They will swear to uphold state and national constitutions and immediately work to subvert them. They will swear to love and cherish their wives and live in fornication, adultery, sodomy, pornography, or whatever.

They will swear to live by the constitutions and government of the church, until they want to divorce their husbands, beat their wives, waste their resources in pleasure and selfishness. Their vows and the taking of the name of God means nothing if it gets in the way of their sinful desires and habits.

They will sign contracts and the sue to break the contracts, using lawyers with a sense of law that is as empty as their blasphemous lives. The emptiness of their lives has no bottom until they sink into the bottomless pit and darkness of hell.

Jesus said it another way, Matthew 7:26 "And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."

Everything built upon lying words will fall as surely as the dikes failed before the onslaught of Katrina, revealing the vanity of building upon sand. Wealth cannot be created by a sea of paper, signed by liars and cheats; You cannot make a meal of pictures of steak and salads; If the works are wood, hay, and stubble the Day willl declare it and men will be revealed to be liars and fools.

Men nurse their grievances and feed their grudges. Blasphemers dishonor their fathers and their mothers; they curse their churches; they defame faithful ministers; they lie and cheat, they lust and desire to have, but they have not because they ask not. Why should they ask of a god they perceive to be vanity? We do not know He exists, they whimper, as if His existence were as light and vain as their own imaginations and wickedness.

Empty hope and empty dreams become their lives and fill their imaginations. They know more about Hollywood vanities and pornographic television than they do the word of God. Even the minds of Christians are more occupied with movies and dreams than sober meditation on the Holy
Scriptures and the Holiness and Majesty of God. They see every movie that comes to town, but have never read the Bible through. They love dreams more than the truth, feeding on husks when a banquet of food and life is within reach.

Even Job's friend Bildad knew this and told Job: [Job 8]

8 For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers:
9 (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)
10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?
11 Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?
12 Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb.
13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish:
14 Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.
15 He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand: he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure.

Job recognized that Bildad spoke the truth, but knew that Bildad was wrong in his application of it. [Job 9:1,2] He knew that man could not measure up to God and must seek justification in a perfect measure and perfect words. But Job confesses the vanity of his own words:

Jobe 9: 32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. 33 Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.

Job knew that He could only contend with God on God's terms and with God's words. He lamented that theire was no Mediator. There was a Mediator, but He had not yet been revealed; a Mediator whose words were wisdom and life; if a man built his house upon the words of the Mediator it would stand the test of time and eternity, for God's words are sure. "Let God be true, and every man a liar." Amen.

The Mediator, the Lord Jesus, availed for Job, although Job did not yet know His Name. But Job took God's words seriously and overcame by the faith given to him and expressed in Job 19:25 "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: 26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:"

Jeremiah 17:10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. 11 As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.

The only thing the fool thinks he knows is the value of his own pleasures and thoughts.

Ecclesiastes 10:12 The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself 13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness. 14 A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him?

It begins with no fear of God, so how can there be wisdom? When the name of God is despised and blasphemed, how can anything else have value or make sense. He cannot lie, but He measures all men and finds their lives and minds vain and useless.

Ps 62:9 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

In the day of His wrath, men will not be able to put their thumb on the scale or pervert justice or play with the meaning of words. His law is the Truth. De 32:4 "He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."

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