Bearing The Name

For the Life of the World: Loving Where You Live

Bearing the Name Well

Exodus 20:1–17; Ezekiel 36:20–23

Opening Statement

God has always had a remarkable imagination for what grace can produce.

Generations earlier, God had spoken to Abraham and planted what must have seemed like an impossible promise: “I will make of you a great nation…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” It began as a seed. But now, at the foot of Mount Sinai, the seed has become a people. What began with Abraham and Sarah has grown into tribes and families gathered beneath the mountain, rescued from slavery and brought into the presence of God.

And I wonder if we can imagine the significance of what is happening here. God is present before a people who are his own. Here is the blossom of that seed of promise planted generations earlier. A root has grown into a great tree. God looks upon this people he has redeemed and says, in effect, “You are mine. And through you, the world is going to learn something about me.”

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of his hands. But God has called his people to show the world what he is like.

Creation declares something about God. The heavens tell us of his glory. The skies reveal the work of his hands. But through the flesh-and-blood life of Israel, the nations are meant to encounter something true about the character of God. The God of all creation has chosen to make himself known through a people.

So how will the holy, benevolent, just, and good God become known through Israel? By calling Israel to live in a way that reflects that holiness, goodness, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

This is where I think we have to understand what is actually taking place in Exodus 20. The Ten Commandments are not merely a measuring stick revealing how far humanity falls short. They are a holy standard describing the kind of life God is calling his redeemed people to embody.

And notice where the commandments begin. God does not begin, “You shall have no other gods before me.” He begins, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

Before there is command, there is deliverance.

God does not rescue Israel because they have kept the standard. He gives them the standard because he has already rescued them. God is essentially saying, “You are going to represent me. So let me show you who I am and what a life shaped by my character looks like.”

The commandments were never merely about measuring Israel; they were about forming Israel into a people through whom the world could see what God is like. God has freed slaves and is forming them into a people through whom the nations can encounter a God who values life and truth, a God who values covenant faithfulness, a God who refuses exploitation, a God who provides rest, and a God who alone deserves worship.

The commandments aren't the dream.

The people are the dream.

A people whose worship, relationships, work, rest, speech, desires, and treatment of one another say something true about the God who delivered them.

At Sinai, we are seeing God's imagination—God's intention, God's vision—for what a redeemed people can become. When I use the word imagination, I am not suggesting God is discovering something in the moment. I mean that what God envisioned in the calling of Abraham is now coming into fruition. The promise is becoming a people.

And this people will bear his name.

Named Reality

We understand something about the power of identity even in the ordinary world around us. Simon Sinek famously says that people don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

Consider Apple or Harley-Davidson. For many people, these names came to represent more than a product. There are people who do not simply ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle; they tattoo the logo onto their bodies. At that point you are saying, “This represents something about me. I identify with what this name means.” Apple developed a similar loyalty around creativity, innovation, and thinking differently.

A name can communicate an identity. A symbol can tell the world, “This is something I belong to. This represents something about me.”

But at Sinai, God turns that idea around. Israel isn't simply going to bear God's name so that the world learns something about Israel. They will bear God's name so that their lives tell the world something about God.

That is an extraordinary vocation. And it means the issue is never simply whether Israel claims God's name. The question is whether the life of Israel accurately reflects the God whose name they carry.

The Human Condition

One of the most persistent criticisms of Christianity is that Christianity is little more than a list of rules.

Do this. Don't do that. You are allowed to do this. You are not allowed to do that. Here is the standard; measure yourself against it, discover that you fall short, and then feel guilty about it.

And if that is all Christianity is, then the criticism has some force.

But Scripture presents something much larger. The commandments do not begin with demand; they begin with deliverance. God gives the standard to a people he has already rescued because he is forming them into a people who can reflect his character. The law is not an arbitrary collection of restrictions imposed by a demanding God. It is a picture of life ordered around the holy, just, good, and benevolent God who has made himself known.

But here is where the human condition enters the story.

The deeper problem is not that God has given humanity too many rules. The deeper problem is that even when we know what is good, we discover something within ourselves that resists becoming the kind of people the good requires.

We can know that truth matters and still lie. We can believe faithfulness matters and still betray. We can confess that human life is sacred and still treat some lives as though they matter less. We can know that love of neighbor is commanded and still work hard at defining who qualifies as our neighbor.

The problem is not simply a lack of information.

Knowing what God is like does not automatically make us like God.

There is a difference between knowing the standard and becoming the kind of person who lives in the reality of that standard. And years later, Ezekiel tells us what happens when the name and the image no longer match.

When the Name and the Image No Longer Match

Ezekiel 36 gives us a heartbreaking picture of what has happened to the people God formed to make his character known.

Israel still carries the name. They are still known as the people of YHWH. But their life is telling the nations something false about the One whose name they carry.

Ezekiel says that when Israel was scattered among the nations, the people looked at them and said:

“These are the people of the LORD…”

That sentence should bother us, because the nations are doing theology by watching Israel. They are looking at the people and drawing conclusions about their God. They are not simply saying, “Look at those Israelites.” They are saying, “These are the people of the LORD.”

And God says, “They profaned my holy name among the nations.”

To profane the holy name is to treat as common what is holy, to drag into dishonor the name that Israel was called to bear. The problem is not simply that Israel broke commandments. The deeper problem is that the people who were meant to show the world something true about God had begun to show the world something false.

They bore the right name while displaying the wrong image.

The holy standard had revealed who God is and what life in relationship with this God looks like, but Israel's life no longer reflected the God they confessed. That is what is at stake in Ezekiel.

This is a conviction that has shaped much of my own work in apologetics: “The Church does not defend the faith merely by what it says, but by what it becomes.”

Church, think about that. “Arguments about the goodness of God sound different when spoken by hands that serve.” Claims about generosity sound different coming from generous people. Claims about mercy sound different coming from forgiving people. Claims about the love of God sound different when spoken by people who genuinely love their neighbors. Claims about holiness sound different when they come from a people whose lives are being made holy.

And while there is certainly warning here—and Scripture does not hesitate to warn us—I do not think warning is the deepest note of this passage.

The deeper note is God's desire to be rightly known.

Listen to what God says: “I will vindicate the holiness of my great name…” and then, “The nations shall know that I am the LORD.”

There it is again.

Go back to Abraham: through you the nations will be blessed. Go to Sinai: I am forming you into a people. Come to Ezekiel: the nations will know that I am the LORD.

God has not abandoned the vision. God still intends to make himself known. The failure of his people does not cause God to give up on his purpose.

Instead, God begins talking about transformation.

Just beyond our passage God says: “I will give you a new heart.” “I will put a new spirit within you.” “I will remove the heart of stone.” “I will give you a heart of flesh.” And then: “I will put my Spirit within you.”

That matters enormously, because God's answer is not simply, “Here are the commandments again. This time try harder.”

The answer is transformation.

The holy standard remains holy. But now God promises to work within the people so that what he desires from them is increasingly formed in them.

Christ Reveals the Perfect Image

And this is where the Christian story comes into full view.

If the question at Sinai is, “What does a life shaped by the character of God look like?” then the fullest answer God will ever give is Jesus Christ.

Paul says in Colossians that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.”

We were created to bear the image. Israel was called to represent the name. But in Jesus, the image is perfect.

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what holiness looks like, look at Jesus.

And notice what holiness looks like in him. It is not detached, cruel, or self-righteous. Jesus touches the unclean, welcomes the rejected, tells the truth, confronts hypocrisy, forgives enemies, washes feet, and finally gives himself away.

Jesus does not simply tell us about the Holy Standard.

Jesus embodies it.

His life tells the truth about God.

And then something remarkable happens. The Spirit who rested upon Christ is given to the Church. The promise of Ezekiel—“I will put my Spirit within you”—becomes part of the life of the people of God.

And this is where I think our Wesleyan understanding of sanctification matters so deeply. Sanctification is not simply learning to behave better, becoming increasingly religious, or polishing our public image so people think more highly of Christians.

Sanctification is the Holy Spirit restoring in us the image we were created to bear.

As I wrote in Apologetics Calmly Considered, “The credibility of the gospel is not demonstrated by argument alone but by a community whose life makes no sense unless Jesus is alive.”

The Spirit forms us into the likeness of Christ. The Spirit reshapes our loves, our desires, our habits, our relationships, our speech, and our treatment of other people. The Spirit enables us to become the kind of people whose lives increasingly tell the truth about God.

And that means holiness is not simply about us.

Holiness is for the life of the world.

For the Life of the World

Church, this is where this entire series comes together.

We have been talking about what it means to love where we live. But why does it matter? Why does it matter how we treat our neighbors, how we behave in the workplace, how we conduct ourselves at the restaurant, on the ball field, at school, in the grocery store, or in the neighborhood? Why do generosity, hospitality, integrity, forgiveness, and holy love matter?

Because God has chosen to make himself known through his people.

We have been placed here. Not accidentally. Not simply because this is where our house happens to be. God has placed his Church in the midst of a community he loves.

And wherever God's people are present, there is an opportunity for the character of God to become visible.

That is the invitation.

What if the people around us consistently encountered something true about Jesus because they encountered us? What if our neighbors encountered kindness, the lonely discovered welcome, the discarded discovered dignity, those who failed discovered grace, and even those who disagreed with us still encountered love?

What if this community looked at the people of God and said, “There is something about the way those people live that tells me something about the God they worship”?

Not because we are perfect. Not because we have mastered the standard. But because the Spirit of God is at work within a redeemed people, forming us more and more into the image of Christ.

The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. And the people of God have been called to show the world what he is like.

That is what it means to bear the name well.

That is what it means to image God.

That is what holiness is for.

And that is what it means to love where you live.

Maybe the final question of this series is not simply, “Do I love where I live?”

Maybe the question is:

Because I live here, are the people around me encountering something true about Jesus?

God still has a remarkable imagination for what grace can produce. He still forms a people. He still gives his Spirit. He still makes himself known.

And he has placed us here—

for the life of the world.

The strongest apologetic is not merely a well-constructed argument, but a sanctified people.