(Exodus 20:7 NASB) "7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain."
This is one of the Ten Commandments I have misunderstood more than any other in the 17 years I have known the Lord: Don't take the Lord's name in vain. I thought this commandment had a very specific and limited application. Basically it boils down to not saying, "Oh, my God!" when you are shocked or excited. It means not saying, "Jesus Christ!" when someone cuts you off in traffic.
But this commandment is about far more than how you use God's name as a vocabulary word - it's about how you take His name as a way of life.
How many of you remember the 3 steps to determine who we really are?
1. Dig deep
2. Ask the tough questions
3. Allow God to define you
In other words, do you live according to who He is? A couple weeks ago we were reminded that He is the great I Am; that He is everything we need. He is exactly what you and I need at any specific moment. He is more than enough.
So I got to ask, “Does your life reflect His identity?” The moment you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ you took on His identity. You chose no longer to identify with yourself, with your ways, or even with your will. Just as a slave is identified only by his/her master, so we become bondservants of Christ.
But unlike any other lord or any other savior, He who is both Lord and Savior, God incarnate, chose to lay down His throne to identify with you, to identify with me. And He commanded us to be holy because He is holy. We are ambassadors of Christ.
So when the world looks at you, what is they see? I’m not asking if they like you or accept you. Think of how much the world seems to hate God, especially Jesus Christ. No servant is greater than his master. But when the world looks at you do they see Jesus? Do they see hope in the storm, light in the darkness, unshakeable joy, peace that surpasses all understanding, selfless love?
Or do you live in ways that are incongruent, or should I say incompatible, with the name you took when you decided to call yourself a Christian?
Jesus says that no man can serve two masters (hence the inside conflict we often experience between our spirit and our flesh), Joshua said to choose this day whom you will serve, Peter warns us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, Paul says to crucify the flesh daily, Proverbs tells us to fear God, and all throughout scripture we are told to be salt and light, to give Him praise, make a joyful noise, and proclaim the goodness of God Almighty.
The Bible at times refers to us as gods or sons of god.
(John 10:30-36 NASB) "30 "I and the Father are one." 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. 32 Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" 33 The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God." 34 Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, 'I SAID, YOU ARE GODS'? 35 "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?"
Jesus is not using the law to endorse the idea that we can all be gods as some cults would suggest. The original language of the text translates to mean either God or resembling God in any way. Jesus was saying it is not wrong to identify with God since we are made in His image.
Christian means little Christ. Whether by word or by deed our lives present a picture to our neighbors of who He is, of what His name represents. Just as a bride takes the name of her groom, we (the bride of Christ) take His name. Do we take it in vain, or do we let it change us?
Unfortunately, my tendency - and maybe yours - is to take this commandment almost as a threat. We think God's focus is our behavior. But our actions are only a small part of what it means to take God's name in vain.
In reality, this commandment is directly connected to how we view ourselves. Now this is not a foolish attempt to twist this commandment so we are equals to God. It’s just a simple question of whether or not we are letting God define us.
In essence, if we are called by His name, how are we treating His name?
Remember, Jesus prayed, “let them be one as you and I are one.”
Jewish engagement is unlike American engagements. In Jewish engagement the groom to be usually goes to the father, pays a price for the bride, and a legally-binding engagement begins. The bride’s future is then in the groom’s hands. He prepares a place for her during the engagement and everyone knows she belongs to him; therefore she takes on his identity. All this is done in anticipation of the big ceremony.
So is our engagement to Jesus Christ, who has gone to the Father and paid the price that you and I might be called His very own. Our future is in His hands as we await the marriage supper of the lamb. And in our waiting God has given us 4 things, 4 engagement gifts if you will.
1. God has given you the gift of identity.
In his book, An Anthropologist on Mars, neurologist Oliver Sacks tells about Virgil, a man who had been blind from early childhood. When he was 50, Virgil underwent surgery and was given the gift of sight. But as he and Dr. Sacks found out, having the physical capacity for sight is not the same as seeing.
Virgil’s first experiences with sight were confusing. He was able to make out colors and movements, but arranging them into a coherent picture was more difficult. Over time he learned to identify various objects, but his habits--his behaviors--were still those of a blind man. Dr. Sacks asserts, "One must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person. It is the interim, the limbo . . . that is so terrible."
To truly see Jesus and his truth means more than observing what he did or said, it means a change of identity.
a. You are no longer a slave
i. The Gospels tell us that Jesus gave his life as a ransom for us. (Mark 10:45)
(1 Peter 2:24 NASB) "24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."
(Romans 6:14 NASB) "14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace."
And even though we are freed from sin and are willfully enslaved to God, Jesus declares (John 15:15 NASB) "15 "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."
b. You are more than a number
i. To my country I might just be a social security number, a Hispanic vote, or a social statistic, but God numbers my hair and calls me by name. He loves me
c. You are no longer lost
i. Right now our world is deeply lost. America is deeply lost. We don’t know who we are. We can’t seem to grasp that All Lives Matter and every grievance is a major social injustice. This all points to a need for acceptance. As the world rips itself apart with violence and division, Jesus Christ unifies us as one by His Spirit. Our skin does not define us. Our jobs do not define us. Social media does not define us. We are defined only by He who sovereignly, perfectly loves us all; Jesus Christ.
2. He's given you His identity
a. We are branded with the name of Jesus appointed as royalty. (1 Peter 2:9)
i. Don’t abuse it
b. Don’t tell God what your identity is
i. He knows you better than you know yourself and He has chosen to identify with you, to spare not His Son for you.
c. They don’t hate you, they hate He who is in you
(John 15:18-19 NASB) "18 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you." "19 "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you."
In other words, they hate Christ who is in you. They hate that you look like Him, talk like Him, and live like Him because the cross is foolishness to them. They hate that you have taken His name because they value the wrong things.
3. He’s given you His sufficiency
a. His grace is sufficient. It’s sufficient when you are depressed or suicidal, hurting or wounded. It’s sufficient in all things, through all things, and despite all things.
b. He will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus
i. He knows your needs
(John 15:16 NASB) "16 "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you."
4. God has given you His qualifications
a. What makes us qualified is that He is qualified.
i. “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”
(2 Corinthians 3:5 NLV)
It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God
b. He has placed His authority in us.
i. With the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains
c. Demons will flee at the proclamation of His name
d. His presence in your life will cause the dead to rise
i. Peter’s shadow
Solomon, king of Israel, reflected back on his life in his old age realizing how poorly he had done representing his Lord throughout his life. For all the riches he had amassed, acceptance he had gained from the world, for all the favor gained from his people he lamented in Ecclesiastes it was all in vain. His life did not paint a clear picture of who God was and it saddened him.
Closing:
What does your life say about the name of Jesus?
John Stott said, “When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.”
Allowing God to define you is the hardest thing you will ever do. It requires daily discipline, but His grace is sufficient and power and freedom are in His name.
God wants to give you His name in your situation, in your weakness, and in your need. But you have to choose to take it. There once was a time when man did not so much as utter God’s name. His name was given no vowels, for the belief was that His name uttered from the unholy lips of man would defile it. Jesus laid down His life to break that holy divide and make us holy as He is holy and in doing so commanded us to ask anything in His name, to proclaim His name, lift up His name and walk in the joy, confidence, and love that bring glory to His name. Today if you aren’t feeling whole, know that His name makes you whole. If you don’t feel love, know that His name is love, if you are confused His name is truth. If you are dead inside, His name is life. Whatever the need, Jesus proclaimed, “I Am.”
When I gave my life to Jesus Christ I took the Lord’s name and I have not done so in vain. Because I bare His name, I declare, “I am free” by how I live my life. It is not without its struggles but His grace carries me through and I am not content in falling short of anything. I am content only in His will, for it is good and perfect.
How will you use His name? Hopefully not as Solomon did, in vain.
What does His name mean to you? Will you allow it to transform you into the truth of who you were meant to be?
None of us will ever be Jesus or be God, but we are His body and we take His name with us wherever we go.
-Inspired and adapted from the You Version Unqualified devotional-
