Don’t misuse the name
Notes
Transcript
As I was looking at the scripture for this week, it immediately made me think about the old Abbot and Costello bit, who’s on first. In the bit Abbott is the manager of a baseball team and Costello is trying to find out a lot of information about the team, so he says to Abbott, obviously you know the names of the people on the team, so tell me, “Who is on first?”
Abbott says, “Yes.”
And you can only imagine what happens here, Costello is frustrated, I’m sure he is thinking Abbott has lost his mind, so he says, “I mean the fellow's name.”
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The first baseman.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy playing…
Abbott: Who is on first!
Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first
And it leads to this interesting back and forth where the guys have some pretty interesting names that completely frustrate Costello, and what we can see in all of this is names are of the upmost importance. They mean something they change how we handle things and look at people. Any of you in this room who have had the pleasure of naming your child probably understand the importance of names. For Jennifer and I names were something of the most importance when it came to our children, we wanted them to have good names that had strong meanings behind them, that helped to prepare them for who they were and who we wanted them to be in the eyes of God for Him. If you got to help name a child you probably remember the moments where you are looking through a book and you see a name that kind of sounds good, its got a good ring to it, and you bring it up to your spouse and it is immediately shot down because they knew an awful person who had that name and you don’t want to associate with that name anymore, so that name is quickly out.
Or maybe you are like some other people and you didn’t put a terrible amount of thought into names of kids and not thinking of how they would be made fun of on the playground for the name you picked out for them. I remember Jennifer was in a group online with some people when we were having different children and you would hear horror stories of the names people had given their children. I remember one person had named their child ‘Abcde’ (ab suh dee) and I hear and joked if the middle name was ‘lmno.’ (ella min o) Or there is the person Jennifer had heard of who was having a hard time figuring out what to name her daughter and when they pushed the baby back in the room it had a tag on the basinet so she named the baby, ‘Female’ (fe mal lay). I can only imagine these kids on the playground later in life.
The point of the matter is names are important, we have this place where we have to see the importance of it, and this morning as we continue in the series, Ten Words we are going to see what God says about the importance of his own name. We have to remember, the ten words, or as you may know them commandments were never supposed to be this restrictive rules for how we can live our lives. Instead, they were given to give us life; a full life - the life God had intended for us in the garden when we Adam and Eve lived and walked with Him. The first word he gave us told us we shouldn’t add any Gods to him, he was all we needed and we shouldn’t need to add anything to make us whole and content. We talked last week about how the second word kind of built on the first and we are not supposed to even think about trying to represent him in some type of idol. No matter what we do it will always fall short and not live up to his full glory, so it is important for us to never try. We talked a bit about how because we were made in his image it is important for our lives to point to him, for us to be a full representation of Him to the world around us - So we have to learn to live a lot like Jesus.
This morning we pick up the text in verse 7 of Exodus 20 and we will kind of start with the first half of that verse.
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…
Most of you are probably familiar with this language when it comes to the way you memorized or learned these commandments as a child, the problem is for most of us that word vain, coming from vanity isn’t in our vernacular. We aren’t sure exactly how to contextualize it. When we think of vanity it reminds me of the old magazine Vanity Fair, and when I saw that magazine I always pictured the people on the cover in love with their fashion and probably to a point themselves more than the world around them.
However if you are using the NIV, you may see this word as
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God…
This is probably a more accurate description of what is really going on here in this context. We should not misuse the name of God. This was so important to the people and they held this in high regard and there are a couple different ways we can misuse the name of God.
First, we can not hold it in the reverence it deserves. We have to go into that a little deeper to really understand. So when God was using Moses to free his people from their captivity in Egypt he is talking to Moses and giving him instructions and Moses is kind of deflecting the situation by trying to find a way out of it. So he says, to the burning bush mind you, if they ask who sent me, what am I supposed to tell them? Who should I say sent me and in Exodus three we see God tell him, tell them I am that I am sent you.
אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה
'ehye 'ăšer 'ehye I am that I am
Then he goes on to say in Exodus 3:15
15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
And just as you see here on the screen we have translated the literal name of God to The Lord in all caps because their is reverence for that name. Just let me give you a little background here, the word you see is the word Yod-Hay-Waw-Hay
יהיה
YHWH
So when Jews would see this word they would never say it, mostly out of respect for God and for fear of using the word incorrectly, so when their eyes would see this word they would say the word Adonai. Which Means the Lord.
אֲדֹנָי
Adonai
Later on to make sure they would remember to do this they started adding the vowels from the word adonai to the consonants of the literal name of God and if you were to read it literally it would say
יְהֹוָה
Yehovah
But the thing about it is there is not a single jewish person then or now that would read that and say the name of God is Yehovah, it is not, they would just see that word and say Adonai. There are some Jews today who say Hashem which just means the name. But there was this fear for them to not say it or use it incorrectly.
It reminds me of a story of Bob Knight the legendary head coach at the University of Indiana right before he went through all the controversy and had to leave. Apparently there were a bunch of perspective students who were on tour at the university and they just happened to pass coach Knight and one of the kids was excited and yelled “Hey Knight!”
True to his reputation, Bob Knight walks over to the kid and loses his mind, “Its not Knight to you, it’s COACH Knight,” and while this example may not mean he deserved that kind of respect at least in his own mind he thought there needed to be a little bit more respect on his name.
But what did Jesus say about the name of God and how we are supposed to use it? When Jesus was teaching his followers how to pray and what they should say he had this to say.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…
Did you catch that? He said when we pray we should know how hallowed his name is, how holy his name is, how reverent his name is, and we should hold esteem in the name of God. He is holy, he is great and we should keep and remember that.
So, first, we can not give the name the reverence it deserves and secondly we can try to use it for our own power. Let me explain this a little bit, I had a friend in high school who had a younger brother who wasn’t the best character, he didn’t make the best life choices. For example, what finally got him in the most trouble was some people had made him mad and he wanted to get back at them so he knew all these people were going to be at a party and he went and doused gasoline all around the trailer and attempted to set it on fire. The only problem is he bought diesel and it wouldn’t light, so he left and bought some regular gasoline and went back and actually set the trailer on fire. Now since I tell that story let me first say that none of the 14 people inside were hurt, they all got out just fine, but I tell you that story to tell you this. Anytime people who were friends with his older brother found themselves in a situation where they may have to get in a fight they would just tell people, Hey man I’m friends with Barry Ford, which is the little brothers name, of course I changed it, but they would talk about his name just to save them from a situation.
When we get to a place where we are familiar and comfortable with people we can try to use them and their reputation for ourselves. We try to use the power they have in the ways that will best benefit our lives. For instance, this is a lot of what is happening with the NAR movement today. This is the New Apostolic Reformation movement and they kind of combine this charismatic movement with reaching and taking over all aspects of society, but they have a lot of weird teachings. For one, they teach you can sleep on the graves of dead ‘saints’ and if you do some of their wisdom and power will impart in your life. However, one of the more intense beliefs they hold is they can do anything by invoking the name of Jesus. If you have blindness, they believe they can invoke the name of Jesus over it and you will be healed. Cancer, same thing, they just invoke the name of Jesus over it and you will immediately be healed. So you may think, well Jesus can do anything, I believe he can heal all these things, and by all means he can, the problem here is they are trying to take the power of Jesus just through his name into their own hands. Oh, and if you’re not healed? Its your fault. You didn’t have enough faith.
This was the problem they were being warned about with misusing the name of God, the people of Israel were Gods people, and all around them there were people who were swearing to other gods and invoking those names to try to get what they wanted. Here God is warning them against those actions, because remember these words were a way for us to live life to the fullest and have the kind of life we were intended. As part of the covenant he is warning against us looking outside of him fulfilling our needs and desires and trying to take it into our own hands. He is claiming we just trust in him and what he has for us and this doesn’t mean we don’t pray and ask him to move, because obviously Jesus gave us the way we should pray, but it means we don’t try to use his name for our own agenda.
Lastly, this morning their is another scary side of this situation. It is when we allow the words to become guideposts and rules for our lives instead of leading us into a life that is closer to him and the way he intended us to live. Jesus gave us two very distinct warnings when it came to this.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
It is clear it isn’t just about follow the words empty hearted he has given us. It was never about just staying within the goal posts of the ten words but it was about allowing these words to turn our hearts and lives to Him. It wasn’t just about changing what we do, it was about changing what we want to do. This is the difference Jesus makes in our lives as well as we come to him, its not just about behavior change its about not wanting to do those old things anymore. Look how Jesus dug even deeper.
8 “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”
He is saying it’s not just about doing it out of blind ambition, but he wants our hearts to be tuned to him, and this can come to so many aspects of our Christian journey. This morning the question for you is are you holding Jesus to the place he deserves, are you honoring and revering him for who He is and what he has done? Or are you just using his name and power for your own good? Holding on to him like a little genie in a bottle who is to do YOUR will and not his own? Are you here this morning because your heart is hungry, because you want to know more about him and grow closer to him, and have a time to worship him for who he is, or are you here because it fits the goalposts of what you have decided makes a good Christian life? Don’t allow yourself to be counted in the group of people who will call Jesus Lord Lord, but not enter the kingdom of heaven because your heart isn’t attuned to him. Let’s pray.
