INTRODUCTION
• What’s in a name? How many of you when you were kids were told about how important it was for you not to tarnish the family name by doing something really stupid?
• A Chinese friend of ours who we met in Macomb told us that in China when young people would get out of line with public displays of affection they would take the young people to the police station along with their families and the authorities would berate the family for hours over how the incident brought shame on them. How the parents failed the children and the community.
• What’s in a name? The Third Commandment addresses that issue. If you remember in the first of God’s ten “statements” God establishes His authority for giving us the rest of His commands. He also established the fact He has a relationship with the nation of Israel at that time. In the second statement of command, God tells us we must put Him first.
• This Third Commandment is going to take us a bit deeper than it looks on the outside. The Third Commandment goes right to the character of God and how God expects us to respect and reflect that character in what we say and do in life.
• What does God really mean when He tells us not to take his name in vain? Is there more to it than forbidding foul language?
• Let us look at Exodus 20:7!
SERMON
I. WE CAN BREAK THIS COMMAND WITH OUR LANGUAGE
A. Cursing
• When we read the Third Commandment, the first thing many of us think of is cursing. We hear people invoking God’s name in ways that we know God would not like. We see it everywhere.
• I do not think many people think about what they are saying when they do this. They do not understand just how disrespectful it is to God when they do this. Many Christian’s understand this usage of God’s name as the main issue of the Third Commandment.
• This is one way in which we can break the Third Commandment.
• God does not want us to use His name as a curse word. I know many Christians who struggle with this. This is something that demands our attention. If we are struggling with our language, we need to prayerfully learn to control it.
• Doing something in vain means we are doing something useless. When we use the Lord’s name in vain we are using it in a way that is useless.
• We must also guard against sanitized versions of using God’s name in vain. This is something most everyone struggles with in some way. We need to do all we can to learn to control and eliminate the sanitized versions of using God’s name in vain and cursing from our language. (EXPLAIN)
• READ JAMES 3:8-10 EXPLAIN
B. False Swearing
• We can also take the name of the lord in vain by false swearing. This is the issue the scriptures speak of the most.
• LEV 19:12 ’You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord.
• JAM 5:12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment.
• You hear people saying “I swear to God” or “As God is my witness.”
• James tells us that we should be people of our word so we do not have to swear. (James is not prohibiting swearing in a legal case)
• If we are people who can be trusted, we do not need anything behind it to verify the accuracy of what we are saying.
• If we make a promise, we do not need to swear to make it valid. A Christian is to be trustworthy.
C. Misuse of the name of God
• This follows closely to false swearing but it is a bit different.
• According to Dr. Laura in her book “The Ten Commandments” (p.65)- Ancient people viewed names as powerful tools that allowed people to control the gods and spirits beyond. The God of the Israelites was different from all other “gods”. His name was to be used in blessing and not in magical incantations. By invoking His name, people could not manipulate this God to do their will.
• Today we do the same sort of thing. Every time a politician uses the name of God in such a way to get votes, it is misusing God’s name. When we pray for things that we KNOW God will not honor we are misusing God’s name.
• In the Old Testament book of Numbers we have an instance where the leaders of two of Israel’s enemies Midian and Moab wanted a prophet named Balaam to curse the Israelites.
• Balaam refused to misuse the name of God because God warned him not to! (Numbers 22:1-ff) When we do what we know God does not want us to do and then tell people it was God’s will, we are misusing God’s name or taking it in vain!
II. WE CAN BREAK THIS COMMAND BY OUR LIFESTYLE
• A true translation of the Third commandment from the Hebrew points to “carrying” the Lord’s name in vain- that means that actions, behaviors, and positions we take in God’s name must not defame Him. (Dr. Laura, “The Ten Commandments”)
• History is marred with episodes of torture, murder, rape, and plundering in the “name of God”.
• Calvin Miller in an article “The Taste of Joy” in Christianity Today, (Vol. 31, no. 15.) I am disturbed when I hear believers say "Lord" thoughtlessly. Many Christians are guilty of making Christ only a figurehead while continuing to run their lives just as they did before. It may be possible to fake the lordship of Christ now, but in the days when Paul wrote the letter to Romans, "Lord" was not a word used flippantly by the church.
• We can break the Third Commandment by professing that God is our God and then living in a way that does not reflect it. They way we live can have a profoundly positive or negative effect on people’s lives and eternity.
• Years ago in Germany, there was a young Jewish boy who had a profound sense of admiration for his father. His family’s life centered on the acts of piety and devotion prescribed by their religion. The father was zealous in attending worship and religious instruction, and he demanded the same from his children. While the boy was a teenager, the family was forced to move to another town in Germany. There was no synagogue in the new town, and the pillars of the community all belonged to the Lutheran church. Suddenly the father announced to the family that they were going to abandon their Jewish traditions and join the Lutheran church. When the stunned family asked why, the father explained that changing religions was necessary to help his business. The youngster was bewildered and confused. His deep disappointment soon gave way to anger and a kind of intense bitterness that plagued him throughout his life. That disappointed son, disillusioned by his father’s lack of integrity, eventually left Germany and went to England to study. He sat daily at the British Museum, formulating various ideas and writing a book. In that work, he introduced an entirely new world-view, envisioning a movement that would change the social and political systems of the world. Drawing from past experiences with his father, he described religion as an “opiate for the masses” that could be explained totally in terms of economics and personal gain. Today, millions of people still live under the system invented by this embittered man, and millions more suffered under previous regimes that incorporated its values. His name, of course, was Karl Marx, and his idea was communism. And it all began with his father’s misuse of the name of God for the sake of profit. SOURCE: James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life, pp. 33-34 (www.sermoncentral.com)
• Even behavior without specific evil intent, springing forth from indifference or weakness of character has the power to profane God. We should take the responsibility of representing God seriously! (2 Cor 5:20)
• LEV 19:2 "Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ’You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. The best was to not profane God’s name is for His people to live a holy life.
III. BREAKING THIS COMMAND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN LIGHTLY
• Did you see something in this commandment that you do not see in the others? We see the immediate threat of punishment.
• Why? This commandment is important to God because the name of God cuts right to the character of God!
• The Bible tells us we are ambassadors for Christ. (2 Cor 5:20) We are told to that we are to do all that we do in the name of Jesus. (Col 3:17) We are told in 1 Corinthians 10:31 that all we do is to be done for the glory of God.
• When we are Christians, what we do reflects God.
• Your name says who you are. When you think of the name Jesse James, it causes us to think one way. How many parents name their daughters Jezebel? Delilah? Names represent the person. John Wayne Gaci, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson.
• God has many names throughout the scriptures, each represent a different aspect of His character. Time will not allow me to go into them all.
• When we take God’s name in vain either by word or deed, we are making God look bad. When people murdered, raped and pillaged in the name of God, it makes God look bad.
• People used to really work hard making sure their name was something to be proud of. The name represented the person.
• God wants us to understand how important it is for us to take His name seriously!
CONCLUSION
• How are you doing with the name of God? Are you taking it in vain through your language or your lifestyle? Are you taking this command lightly? God does not.
• How many of us would fight tooth and nail to keep our name clean?
• I hope that any of us who call ourselves by the name of Jesus will represent Jesus in such a way that it brings honor and glory to Him.
• I think on some level we all struggle with this. The path we need to take is to recognize the problem and repent. What’s in a name? Everything!
