NAME ABUSE
This series began in a search for answers to a very common misconception when it comes to whether or not a person is going to heaven. There is this belief in our society that in order for a person to be accepted by God, in order for God to hear a person’s prayers, and in order to heaven you have to obey the rules.
What rules?
The Ten Commandments, of course.
Now if you’ve been here during the last two times I’ve been in the pulpit, we began blasting apart this myth. Rules do not lead to God’s acceptance. What we found is that God never gave his commandments and said, “Here’s some rules for you. If you obey these you and I can have a relationship.” Instead God gave his rules to people who he already had a relationship with.
The very next thing we talked about is that God wants to be your one and only God. Because you know what? He is the only God.
Right along with that we learned that God doesn’t want us to make anything, any idol in his image. He can’t be represented because he is bigger than anything that you and I could create. Trying to create an image of him would be, on our parts, an attempt to make him more manageable. And God is not manageable.
Today I want to continue looking at the Ten Commandments.
Now if someone were to ask you where to the Ten Commandments are you’d say, “Old or New Testament?”
Old Testament. Great.
And more specifically they’re found in the book of?
Exodus, right.
Anyone know what chapter?
Chapter 20. Wow. We really are getting this.
We’re going to be discussing a commandment that for years has had a specific meaning to most people. In fact, many of you were probably learned this very specific application while you were growing up.
If you were to look at this commandment in the King James Version, it would say, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in… vain.”
Hey some of you do remember this one.
Now when I was a kid, I was taught that this commandment meant that when I got angry, when something went wrong, I was not to say, “Oh God” or “Jesus” and I was most certainly not to add the word “damn” behind them. Any of you learn that specific meaning when you were growing up?
In fact, my parents wouldn’t even allow me to say “gosh” or “gee.” And that commandment went something like this, “You shall not say “gosh” or “gee” so that you never slip into saying “God” or “Jesus.” Let’s see the hands of the people whose parents like that.
A few of you. We had some weird parents, huh?
There’s really nothing wrong with having rules to keep us from breaking other rules. Even the Israelites were doing this.
In fact, we find that in certain Jewish societies there were men whose entire lives were dedicated to copying the scriptures word for word. Now these men had a different pen and a different ink for each time they came across the name of God in the text. In many of these societies they would even go so far as to throw away or even break the pen so that there was no chance that the pen could be used for something that would be against God’s will.
Now imagine for a moment how tedious this process must have been. Take Genesis Chapter One for example. “In the beginning...” Need to change pens. “God…” SNAP! “…created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of…” Need a new pen. “God…” SNAP! “…was hovering over the waters.
In Genesis Chapter One alone the name of God is used thirty times. I’m not sure about you, but to me that’s an awful lot of pens.
But let me ask you something really important. Do you really believe this is what God was talking about when he gave this commandment? Or did we miss the boat on this one?
I mean really think about it. When you stub your toe on a chair and when you get a $300 phone bill in the mail and when your wife comes home and tells you she hit a mailbox with the car, does it really mean not to call out to God? And then does it mean not to call out to his son either?
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s still not proper to call out God’s name in anger. In fact, it’s pretty disrespectful. After all, you don’t use a friend’s name when you’re angry. You’re outside building something and bang your thumb with the hammer. How many of you yell out, “Oh Jeff?”
Didn’t think so.
God’s name is still not a swear word.
But this commandment is about so much more than that. What we’re going to find is that there is a much bigger reason that God not only included this commandment but that he also made it number three.
So grab your Bibles and turn with me over to the book of Exodus Chapter 20. We’re going to start reading in verse 7. I’m going to read this out of the New International Version. And one thing many of you will notice is that the word “vain” does not appear anywhere in this translation.
Here’s what it says, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”
Wow. What an incredible thought. To misuse God’s name.
But if misusing God’s name doesn’t have to do with using it as a swear word, how could we possibly misuse the name of God?
You know what? It happens all the time. When we use God to accomplish our goals, we leverage the very name of God. Especially when he isn’t even involved in those goals. When it isn’t even among the things that he has planned for us.
Here’s a great example of this. How many of you have ever owned or managed a business?
A few years ago I was one of five managers on the staff of a fairly busy restaurant. At the time we were having major problems with the produce vendor. The vegetables were always coming in wilted and close to spoiling. Worse still there was never enough. We were constantly having to run to the grocery store, sometimes two and three times a day. Then all of a sudden the problem seemed to come to a stop. A new vendor started bringing everything we needed.
The problem was the owner had no idea there even was a new vendor. So he got the first bill and he was mad. Someone in management had gone and set up a contract with the vendor and they’d done it without the owner’s permission. They had gone and misused the owner’s name to get what they wanted.
That’s exactly what we do with God. And I believe that this is one of the reasons God put this so early into the Ten Commandments is that he knew that was about to give all kinds of rules about how to live a more fulfilling and intimate life through him. He knew the moment that he did people, just like you and me, would start looking for loopholes in his laws.
So the first thing that you and I need to realize is: Don’t use God’s name to accomplish something that God is not part of.
Biblically and historically this occurs constantly. In fact, the Pharisees were great at doing just that. They had found what they believed to loopholes in God’s word and they were using them to their advantage.
Over in the book of Luke there is a portion of the story from when Jesus cleared out the temple. This is the angriest that we ever see Jesus become. He goes into the temple and finds people selling animals to be sacrificed that were never intended by God to be sacrificed. The poor people would buy these animals because in order to get their sins atoned they had to sacrifice something. Then there were the moneychangers. These men were exchange money at a highly inflated rate and turning a profit at it. To top it all off, this is going on with the permission of the religious leaders. Jesus was furious.
Now just listen to what he says. This is found in Luke 16:46. “It is written, “My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made a den of robbers.””
In other words, God set of the temple for a specific purpose and the religious leaders had misused God and they had misused his purpose to line their own pockets. Jesus is accusing them not only of ignoring God’s will but also of breaking the eighth commandment. The one that says, “You shall not steal.” And they’re doing this in God’s name.
There is also the fifth commandment which says, “You shall honor your father and your mother.” There are no stipulations on that. The Pharisees had managed to find a loophole on it too. In fact, they were so proud of the loophole they had found they had gone as far as making it a tradition. What they would do was go to the temple and dedicate all their worldly possessions to God. They didn’t have to give up the possessions. They just had to dedicate them and that way they were “holding on to them” for God, just in case they were needed. Then the Pharisees parents would grow old and no longer be able to support themselves and the parents would ask their sons for help. A typical response might have sounded something like this. “I’d like to help you, Mom and Dad. But I gave everything I own to God. It belongs to him now and I can’t just be giving it away.” Now that sounds like something God would have wanted, doesn’t it?
Jesus confronts them on this issue too. Over in Mark 14:13 he says these words, “Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like this.”
You see God taught one thing and the Pharisees once again decided to take it a different direction. They’re doing something in the name of God that God had nothing to do with. They’d set their own agenda.
It occurred again during the Middle Ages. The churches in Europe decided that Jerusalem needed to be free. We now know this series of events to be called The Crusades. From all over Europe soldiers set out for Israel in the name of God. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children died in the process. The problem was God had nothing to do with it. He’d never to anyone to go free Jerusalem. Instead Jesus had said, “Go make disciples of all nations.” Jerusalem wasn’t even free when he was there. It was under Roman rule.
Now it’s all good and fine to point out the mistakes of the Pharisees and the crusaders. The truth is that people have been using God’s name to accomplish their personal goals since the Garden of Eden. We can see it repeated over and over and over again throughout human history.
But now it gets personal.
You and I do it every single day and we may not really even think about it.
What? How could I say something like that? We don’t really do that do we?
We do. I’m sorry but it’s true.
You and I have relationships in our lives that God may not want us to be involved in. We’ve got habits that we know God wouldn’t approve of. We watch television shows and movies with ungodly content. We read books that don’t even come close to expressing God’s point of view.
The sad thing is that we excuse these things in our lives. We tell ourselves, “God just wants me to be happy. He won’t be too disappointed if I do these things.”
There is a verse in the Bible that I love. You can find it in 1 John 1:9. It says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
You know what that means?
I just found a loophole! I can go do whatever it is that I want and that I know God doesn’t want me doing. Then I can run back over here, ask for forgiveness, and everything will be OK. Right?
Wrong.
The sad truth is that you can’t play God against God.
God says, “Tim, I already addressed that.”
Maybe you missed it. It was right there in Exodus 20:7, the second part of the verse. “…for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”
What does that mean?
I don’t know for sure. But I think I’ve come up with something. Keep in mind that this is just my personal thoughts.
If you misuse the name of God you will miss him.
You see, it happened to the Pharisees For more than a thousand years, generation after generation they had been taught the laws and the prophecies so that they would when the Messiah was there. That way they could get everyone else to follow him. That’s why over and over again in the New Testament, Jesus would heal someone and tell them to go show themselves to the Pharisees. They were supposed to recognize the signs. And they crucified him! They had all the evidence they needed and because they had spent so much time misusing the name of God they missed him. They didn’t recognize him.
You and I can do the very same thing. We can know all kinds of Biblical knowledge. We can go to church every week. We can even talk to God. But so long as we’re busy misusing God’s name to accomplish what we want and playing God against himself we’ll miss him. You and I can know who he is, but there won’t be that personal relationship that you and I so desperately need.
