January 23 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Exodus 19:16-25:

¹⁶And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.
¹⁷And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.
¹⁸And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
¹⁹And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.
²⁰And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.
²¹And the LORD said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish.
²²And let the priests also, which come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them.
²³And Moses said unto the LORD, The people cannot come up to mount Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it.
²⁴And the LORD said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the LORD, lest he break forth upon them.
²⁵So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them.

Devotional

Some men speak hardly a dozen words without violating the third commandment flagrantly. The lips and the pens of sinful men today give profuse expression to irreverence for the Name of the Lord our God. Some men may say that they mean no harm when they use the Name of God lightly. They have merely developed a certain habit of expression - a habit not uncommon in the circles in which they move - and they intend no offense by it. Such men do not realize that the third commandment forbids, among other things, any light and thoughtless use of the Name of God.

We may well be grieved and shocked by the increase in flagrant violation of the third commandment in our land, but we should all realize that the third commandment is violated in more ways than this. We all fail to meet its exacting requirements. Does not the third commandment forbid "all profaning and abusing of anything whereby God makes Himself known," and does it not require "the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word and works"? Our God does not regard any form of violation of the third commandment as trivial.

As we worship the Lord our God today, let us give thanks again for the work of our Mediator, who bore our guilt; and let us extol our God and King and bless His holy Name.

Welcome to "Think on These Things," a twelve-week daily devotional prepared by the late Dr. John H. Skilton, an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and for many years Chairman of the New Testament Department at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

We are indebted to P & R Publishing and Skilton House Ministries for permission to use this copyrighted material on the OPC Web site. (P & R held the copyright from 1975 to 2005, at which time they reassigned the copyright to Skilton House.)