“WHAT’S IN A NAME?”
(Exodus 20:7)
I played in a golf tournament the other day. I was in a foursome with three men whom I had never met. (The tournament format required that we be paired together because we all had similar handicaps. I didn’t know these guys because I make it a practice to never play with anybody as bad as I am). We had played about twelve holes when one of them got around to asking, “Well, Dan, what do you do for a living.” I said, “I am a pastor” and watched with glee as they turned white and swallowed hard trying to remember what they had said over the last two and a half hours.
Most of us know the third commandment from the King James Version: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” We usually consider it a commandment against bad language: cursing, swearing and profanity.
The word vanity, used often in the Old Testament, means “to empty of con-tent, to make irrelevant.” That’s what the third commandment is about: emptying God’s name of significance; making it irrelevant; identifying God as something He is not.
I. EMPTYING GOD’S NAME OF MEANING
We devalue God’s name when we take holy things lightly. This danger is greater for those involved in the life of the church. “God jokes” and satire of the sacred rob us of a sense of the spiritual. “A mouth full of words about God can never substitute for an empty heart.”
A. Profanity
Profanity from the word profane, means that which is not sacred. A profane person treats life with contempt or a lack of reverence. He is insensitive to the sacred and excludes himself from its benefits. He is impure, defiled, and unholy.
Profanity is a symptom of a rebel heart. “Swearwords …are the angry shorthand for a long list of complains we have against the God who made us.”
A few years ago, the movie Gone With the Wind celebrated its fiftieth anniver-sary. The media recalled the flap created when Clark Gable used the word, “damn” in that movie. Today if the worst word used in a movie is “damn,” its probably “G” rated.
Lord Byron once said of a man, “And as he knew not what to say, he swore!” If we remove the words “hell” and “damn” from our language, some people would have difficulty framing a complete sentence. The late Colonel Sanders of fried chicken fame once said that his conversion to Christ cost him half his vocabulary.
The squalid and suggestive speech that sears our ears must not be magnified by our mouths. We need to pray with the psalmist, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).
B. Lying
God’s name was also misused by people seeking to reinforce their lies. They used God’s name to witness to a lie, saying, “With God as my witness, this is true,” when it was not so.
Perhaps the greatest moral problem facing our nation is a decline in integrity! Constitutional scholar Robert Bork was asked, “What is wrong with our world?” He answered, “We have lost our common denominator of a moral language.”
A recent survey was conducted among college students on the subject of cheating. A Rutgers University anthropology professor, Michael Moffatt, led the study. Forty-five percent of the students admitted to cheating on tests occa-sionally, and another thirty-three percent said they cheated regularly. Dr. Moffatt, said that “cheating comes almost as natural as breathing,” and called it an academic skill almost as important as reading, writing, and math.
A woman of great wealth authorized a book about her genealogy. During the research, the author engaged for the assignment discovered that one of her grandfathers had been electrocuted in Sing Sing. He insisted that he would not delete this information from the book, though the woman pleaded for him to hide the truth. The final edit of the book read: “Her grandfather occupied the chair of applied electricity in one of America’s best known institutions. He was very much attached to his position and literally died in the harness.”
God says, “No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence” (Psalm 101:7). “The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful (Proverbs 12:22).
The Pharisees of Jesus’ time developed elaborate rules for oath-taking. They carefully kept the letter of the law, while creating formulas that allowed them to be untruthful. They insisted that oaths sworn “to the Lord” must be kept, but they welcomed the loophole of avoiding the specific mention of God’s name. Clever in their speech, they swore by heaven, or earth but painstakingly skirted the name of God. Their promises were impressive, but they had no intention of keeping them. They could say, “You didn’t hear me correctly...I didn’t make a binding oath. I didn’t use the Divine Name.”
Someone has said, “A lie may seem like the easy way out, but it will prove to be like an EXIT sign placed over a closet door. It leads nowhere.” Actually, he was wrong. Lying does have a destination. Revelation 21:8 says, “all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."
C. Hypocrisy
The late Quaker scholar Elton Trueblood said that profane language is not as bad as giving God lip service. Perhaps the worst form of breaking the third commandment is hypocrisy. The commandment might be rewritten, “You shall not take God lightly, or treat Him as secondary.” Too many of us are guilty of breaking the commandment at this point. We want the benefits of Christianity without paying the price for them.
This commandment calls for integrity in our personal relationships with God. Honesty is crucial in that relationship. God says, “Don’t patronize me. Don’t try to use me. Don’t caricature me. Don’t try to manipulate me. Don’t treat me casually. Take me seriously as I am.”
Throughout the Scripture God criticizes mild commitment. In the Old Testament, He says “Don’t take my name in vain.” In the Gospels Jesus said:
“Knowing the correct password—saying ‘Master, Master,’ for instance—isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, ‘Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.’ And do you know what I am going to say? ‘You missed the boat.’ All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don’t impress me one bit. You’re out of here.” (The Message).
Jesus said, “Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). He will not condone half-hearted commitment or a pretense of serving Him. He will not accept a promise signed, “Casually yours.” Integrity in discipleship is foundational. Jesus put it bluntly: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).
Obedience to the third commandment begins with reverence for God. Our words and manner of speaking prove our belief in the only true God as we declare Him worthy of our worship.
II. EXALTING GOD’S NAME OF MAJESTY
Vulgarisms or “cuss words” are not what this commandment is about. The problem is not disgraceful language, but disgracing God by the way we use His name. The command not to take God’s name in vain is far more important than avoiding coarse comments. It’s about our regard for God and how speech either confirms or contradicts our allegiance to Him.
What’s in a name? The answer to that is especially vital when the Lord’s name is in question.
A name stands for the reputation of the person who bears it. Jesus emphasized the majesty of God’s name when He said, “This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). God’s name is to be honored and magnified. Therefore, a new sensitivity should mark our words about Him.
In the Old Testament God revealed Himself by His name. False gods were always named by their creators. By conferring names men gave their false gods personality, character, and reputation. But they could not make God into what they wanted Him to be. He took the initiative in revealing His name. He said, “I Am Who I Am (Exodus 3:14). He chose to disclose Himself and His true nature. One man writes:
God has a name. The misery on the earth is nameless, the evil among men is nameless, for the powers of darkness love to be without a name. Nameless, anonymous letters, let-ters without signatures are usually vulgar. But God is no writer of anonymous letters; God puts His name on everything that He does, affects, and says …God has no need to fear the light of day.
I wish we could recapture some of the reverence the Hebrews had for God’s name. They would not even pronounce the word “Yahweh,” translated “Jehovah” in some versions. As he copied the scripture, when the scribe came to the word God, he stopped and washed his entire body. If the word that merely stood for God, he washed his pen before he continued. Our God is approachable, but we need to be awed again by His transcendent character and to reverence His name.
Joy Davidman says that the third Commandment is like the “warning you see around power plants: ‘Danger—High Voltage!’ For the ancient Hebrews seem to have thought of God almost literally as a live wire.” The holy things of God can-not be taken lightly. The Hebrews told the story of Uzzah who was struck dead when he irreverently took hold of the Ark of God. The lesson is that we must not trifle with God.
God revealed Himself through a variety of names in the Old Testament. “The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:5-6). It pleases God to be called our righteousness. Don’t take this for granted and live below the level of morality and good that God desires for you. You are to engage in spiritual battle. Be ready for the conflict. “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place” (Ephesians 6:14).
The Lord’s name also includes His sanctification. God says, “Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the LORD, who makes you holy” [or who sanctifies you or sets you apart as holy] (Leviticus 20:7-8). Don’t misuse His name by compromising your purity before God. Please Him by living a holy life. Paul wrote, “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God (2 Corinthians 7:1).
God is the Lord of peace. We misuse His name when we live in the slough of despond and fail to turn to Him in our turmoil. He is the Lord Who is there, and yet we sometimes treat Him as an absentee God. He is omnipresent, but we act as if He is unreachable. “Don’t you know,” said Paul, “that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). He is Jehovah-rophe, “the Lord who heals” and Jehovah-jireh, “the Lord who provides.” He is our banner and we have victory in Him. He is our shepherd who guides our footsteps. He is the Lord. His name is glorious!
Helen Mallicoat wrote this piece entitled, “I AM.”
I was regretting the past
And fearing the future
Suddenly my Lord was speaking:
“MY NAME IS I AM.” He paused.
I Waited, He continued,
“WHEN YOU LIVE IN THE PAST,
WITH ITS MISTAKES AND REGRETS,
IT IS HARD, I AM NOT THERE.
MY NAME IS NOT I WAS.
“WHEN YOU LIVE IN THE FUTURE,
WITH ITS PROBLEMS AND FEARS,
IT IS HARD, I AM NOT THERE.
MY NAME IS NOT I WILL BE.
“WHEN YOU LIVE IN THIS MOMENT,
IT IS NOT HARD,
I AM HERE.
MY NAME IS I AM.”
We take God’s name in vain when we allow it to be empty of deep personal meaning. What do you need from God? Is it courage to face the future? He says, “I AM courage.” Do you need poise? He says, “I AM poise.” Do you need patience? He says, “I AM patience.” Do you need assurance, joy, peace of mind, wisdom? God says, “I AM! I AM! I AM all these things!” I AM all you need.”
The Ten Commandments have positive application. This third commandment can also be stated positively. “You shall consider the name of the LORD your God trustworthy, for without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).
Fourth Message in a Series on the Ten Commandments
