Sermon: "What's in a Name"

3rd in the "Stone Tablets in a Wireless World" series.
Delivered June 21, 2009 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Sermon Text: Exodus 20:7

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Well, I want to say, "Happy Father's Day," to those of you who are fathers here. It's a special day for us. I want to give a very special "Happy Father's Day" to those of you who are new grandfathers like me. That's special, too. Let's pray, and we'll thank God for fathers, but we'll also pray about going into the Word.

Lord, we thank you when our relationship with our father is good, and when our father lives into a life that's like who you are, our Heavenly Father. It's an incredible good thing in our lives. And so, Lord, we thank you for all those good experiences. We thank you for all the fathers that are represented here. And we thank you for your grace for when they fall short. And we look for your continued grace in us as we continue to try as fathers to be like you. And so, Lord, we commit ourselves to you, and we commit ourselves as a whole congregation now. As we come before your Word, help us to hear it. Help us to respond to it, for we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay. Some of you have heard this before. About two weeks before I became a Christian, I made a bet with my dorm mates. It was about 12 o'clock at night. And we all in the room... and there were lots of us in there... had a contest to see who could go the longest without cursing. See, four-letter words were a form of punctuation for us. You couldn't end a sentence or start one without some kind of added color. I lost the contest... 12:20... still remember it... 12:20.

I went only 20 minutes before I succumbed to the need for punctuation. Two weeks later I gave my life to Christ, and immediately, overnight, my problem with dirty language disappeared. It recurred a few times. I had to struggle with it here and there. But it's never been much of a problem for me in my whole Christian life. And it's about the only area of my life that changed without any effort. Every other area of my life... it's been a battle. This one was effortless.

Today, we're looking at the third commandment... Exodus 20, verse 7, which says this:

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name."

That's what we're focusing on today, and it has nothing to do with my problem with filthy language earlier. It has nothing to do with it.

Now there are Scriptures that deal with unnecessary, unedifying, degrading language. For example, Colossians chapter 3, verse 8 says this:

"But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips."

Ephesians 4:29 talks about unwholesome speech. These things talk about curse words, dirty language, gutter language.

But the third commandment doesn't. The third commandment has to do with something much more important than that: How we treat the character and reputation and honor of the Lord our God. It's good to spend some time on this because I think we don't think that deeply about the meaning of this particular commandment. All we know is that we don't want to be the word police. We don't want to always be saying to people, "Oh, don't say that in front of me. Don't use the Lord's name in vain."

We don't want to always have this lifestyle. I mean, there are times that maybe we have to say that, but we don't want to live that way and make that sort of the way we live into this command. It has to mean more than that. It's in the Ten Commandments. It's in the ten words given at the foundation of Israel. It has to mean more than that. So we need to think about it.

This command comes in the first half of the law which focuses specifically on who God has revealed himself to be and what it means to honor him and revere him in the way we live. And it says, "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name." The thought behind a command like this is that the name of the Lord is more than a label.

Now often times, we use names merely as labels. A label simply tells you that it's this one and not that one. So, for example, the name John or Mary doesn't tell us anything about the people. It simply tells us who they are. That one's John. But from the name, we don't get a sense of their history. We don't get a sense of their character, of what's important to them. In Hebrew society, many names had meaning. And those meanings were chosen on the basis of circumstances surrounding the birth of the child or the aspirations of the parents. Names were supposed to reveal something about the person. Names were considered powerful things.

Now we still understand the power of a name even today. On commercials, every once in a while you'll hear, "the name you can trust." That's this sort of thinking. The name conveys something that affects our attitude and our understanding. For me, when I look at cars, inevitably, certain names mean more to me. Certain brands catch my eye. For me, Toyota and Honda are not just labels. But they represent something to me because of my history. I spent ten years in Japan. I know about Japanese attention to detail and their obsessive concern with quality. And when I see those labels, I think about that history. I think about good cars that I've had. I trust the name.

When Israel heard God's name, it was more than a label to them. It conveyed his character. It let them in on their history with God, what they experienced with God. They recalled called the way he had treated them in the past. Some 500 times in Scripture, God reveals himself through the use of a name, a title, or some kind of description of himself. And none of them are meaningless. Each time God reveals himself through a name, it means something.

When God revealed himself as Yahweh, "I am that I am," "the self-existent one." "El Elyon," "God most high." "El Shaddai," "God of hosts" or "God of the heavenly armies." "Jehovah Jireh," "Yahweh is our provider." These names and other names had meaning to the people. And these names were given at times when these things were reflected in the way God treated his people. And we're told not to use name the Lord in vain. Don't use it an empty, meaningless way. Because that what it means when it says, "Do not misuse the name of the Lord." Them meaning behind that is don't use it in an empty, meaningless, or deceitful way.

Now there are two main ways that we misuse the name of the Lord. The first is thoughtlessly, and the second is intentionally. The first: thoughtlessly. We've heard it a million times: "Oh my god." The Lord of the whole universe, the creator and judge of all, the one who loves us so much that he died for us is called upon dozens of times in a conversation with absolutely no thought, no meaning behind it. That is misusing the name of the Lord.

But there are times we misuse the name of the Lord deliberately. That's thoughtlessly. But sometimes it's more deliberately. We misuse the name of the Lord because we choose to deceive people by bolstering our credibility by referring to God. From the earliest times in the life of Israel, people would use the name of God in oaths and vows that they would take. It was supposed to be a sign that you could really trust what was going to be said yet... next... that you could really depend upon the commitment this person was making. But if they chose to swear by God's name in order to get other people to believe them, all the while never intending to tell the truth or fulfill their promises, that would be misusing the name of the Lord.

Now oaths are still part of our life even now. I don't whether the courts still say it this way, but the truth of testimony in a court was assured by an oath: "So help me God." In weddings, we take vows. And in conversation, we still hear people trying to convince other people of the truth of what they say. "I swear to God, it really happened." And just like in the life of Israel, sometimes those oaths can be meaningful, and sometimes they can be misused, used to deceive.

Now, up until now I've just been focusing in on our words. But we can misuse the name of God by our actions and not just by our words. And actually, in Scripture, profaning the name of the Lord, making his reputation of no repute, dishonoring God through our actions is more common than through our words. Our actions are very powerful.

When we take on the name of God, whether it was Israel or whether it's us as Christians, as Christ-ones, Christ followers... when we take on the name of God, what we do in the world, either raises the reputation of God or destroys his reputation in the eyes of other people. And so we can dishonor God by what we do. In Leviticus 18, verse 21, it talks about the fact that if we call upon God and we serve idols, we profane the name of God. We make his name dirty. We defile his name. We can profane the Lord's name other ways, too.

We can profane the name of God by ignoring the issues of justice. In the book of Jeremiah chapter 34, verses 15 to 17, there's a situation where Israel made a commitment to release their slaves. And then they took them back because it was inconvenient. And so this is what God says to them:

"Recently you repented and did what is right in my sight: Each of you proclaimed freedom to his countrymen. You even made a covenant before me in the house that bears my Name. But now you have turned around and profaned my name; each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had set free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves again. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: 'You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim freedom for you, declares the Lord-freedom to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth.'"

Remember what it said? "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord. I will not hold him guiltless who misuses my name." God brings judgment on his people because they've profaned his name in the eyes of the world and in his own eyes by disobeying.

Romans 2 talks about how our hypocrisy can destroy the reputation of God. Romans 2, beginning in verse 21. I'll begin about in the middle of the verse.

"You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: 'God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.'"

Our words and our actions are important. And by words and by actions we can honor God or we can misuse his name and profane his name.

Now we've been focusing in on the negative, what we shouldn't do, because the command is in the negative form... what we shouldn't do. But there's a positive side. Every negative command aspires to a certain kind of life that we can express in positive ways. What's the positive side of this? We find the positive side best expressed probably in the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, verse 9. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." Our Father in heaven, may your name always be kept holy. Our Father in heaven, may we honor your name. That's the positive side of this command, to hallow, to consider holy, to honor the name of God.

Hallowing the name of God, treating it as holy, is the opposite of misusing it. So I'd like to think together a while about what it means to live this positive sort of lifestyle. What does it mean to hallow the name of the Lord in our lives?

First, let's go back to the command for a moment. The first is the obvious part: "Don't misuse the name of the Lord." There's the mindless part, the "Oh my god." Don't misuse the name of the Lord. And there's the deliberate, manipulative part: "I swear to God." So one of the ways we honor the name of God is by avoiding those misuses. But there are more things that go into honoring the name of God.

It begins by letting God reveal who he really is to us. We can't honor the name, the character, the reputation of God if we don't really know who God is. Think about all the sources we get for understanding who God is. We learn about God in our families. We learn about God from our friends. We go to a comparative religion course in college. We watch the movie, Bruce Almighty. And all of these things throw ideas about God to ourselves.

We have to confront those ideas with what God has said about himself. And so the first thing we need to do after avoiding misuse is to let God reveal who he is by immersing ourselves in the Scriptures. We have to read what God has said about himself, not create our own image of God. That's a form of idolatry, but to let God define who he is. And to do that, we need to go on to the Scriptures.

And one of the things we talk about a lot here is the life-journaling plan. And we offer these at the Connection Central. And in the front of it, there's a Bible reading plan. And if you use it, you get through the whole of Scripture in one year. And if you do something like this every day, it means you spend about 30 minutes of good quality time in the Word of God. I would suggest that that should be our minimum goal. Spend 30 minutes hearing what God says about himself and responding to that.

There are so many things coming into our lives, so many thing coming into our minds. Thirty minutes is half of most of the reality shows we watch... maybe a third. And then there are the special weeks where we watch it all night. It seems to come on like 6 o'clock and end at midnight... I mean... 30 minutes to hear what God has said about himself. Otherwise, we're going to be constructing our own ideas and it's going to be coming from Jeopardy and not from the Scriptures. We need to fill our minds.

But then what do we do once we've filled our minds with who the Lord is? We need to take what we've learned (and this is the next step)... we need to take what we've learned and speak it back to God. We need to talk to God about what we've just learned. And this is hallowing his name as well. So we read in Scripture that God makes a promise to Abraham. He says, "Abraham, I'm going to take you. I'm going to make a great nation out of you. And I'm going to bless you. And through you all the nations of the earth are going to blessed." We read that in Scripture, and then we reflect for a moment.

These words were spoken about 4,000 years ago. How do we even know about this shepherd, Abraham? How do we even know he existed? It's because God was faithful to that promise. God did build a great nation through that man's family. And God did raise up a king in that nation that is king of all kingdoms and offer salvation to all the earth. So God pours out a blessing through Abraham that blesses now all the ends of the earth. And we are getting together on a Sunday morning to worship because God was faithful to that promise 4,000 years ago.

And so we speak that back to God. "God, what a faithful God you are. God, when you made this promise, Abraham couldn't be absolutely sure how it was fulfilled, but look at how you have fulfilled it. In every way you have been true to this promise. You have blessed, and I am now receiving that blessing. And so I praise you, God, that I am receiving a blessing that comes from your faithfulness." We speak it back to God.

If we are hallowing God's name that way and honoring God that way, inevitably we come to a point that we realize that there's something in us that's not in line with who God is. For example, if we've read in Scripture how God is a compassionate god, that he shows mercy and compassion and wants justice for the orphan, for the widow, for the foreigner, for the people who don't have the same power. God does not want people oppressed. And God wants to show his grace to these people. When we read that, we realize, you know there's a problem in me because I don't want to show that compassion to other people.

And so at that point, our next step is to confess who we are in light of who God is, how we fall short. And this, too, is honoring the name of God because we recognize that God's name is high and holy. And God has declared himself to be this sort of person, and we are not that way. God have mercy on us! God, we want to struggle with coming in line with who we are. This honors God.

And then once we've struggled with this whole issue of being more consistently like the God who calls us, we come to the next step. Then we can intercede for the needs we find around us. It comes up in the Lord's Prayer. It says, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This intercession grows right out of hallowing the name of God. Now, I don't know about you, but sometimes when I come up with this laundry list of things that I think are important, I get this sense that "Am I connecting?"

But if we start with the character of God, if we start with the fact that God has revealed that he is a compassionate God who is concerned about justice in the earth, who stands on the side of the oppressed, and wants to meet the needs of people and raise them up. If we then pray that God would be working in our city to bring compassion, to bring justice, to cover the needs of people, we can have confidence about that.

If we talk about our relationships in light of the fact that God is a merciful and loving God, we can have confidence about what we pray for because it's rooted in the character of God, how he's revealed himself to be. And so even then, as we intercede, we are honoring the name of the Lord because we're asking for his will as it's been revealed. And there's great confidence as we pray that way. So we pray out of what we learn about the character of God. Honoring his name by praying his heart.

Finally, remember: actions are very important as well. It's not just what we say. It's not just what we pray. The final way we honor the name of God is by living into response of what we see in him. So we learn something about God, and it calls for 2 kinds of responses from us. The first response is that we emulate his character. So we've learned that God is a compassionate god. So then we wrestle with the fact, "Okay, how do we make room in our lives so that we can show compassion to other people?" Are we too busy? Are we running at a frantic pace so that even if there's a need, we're not ready; we're not able to respond?

If God is a compassionate god and God is generous with his creation, then that calls for a response of us of giving of ourselves, giving of our material things. It God is a god of mercy and of reconciliation, then that calls for us to forgive the people around us. It calls for a response in us where we walk towards the character of God. But that's not the only response. We also respond by depending upon his character. We live a life of response to what God has revealed himself to be.

So if God reveals himself to be a promise-keeping god who is concerned about all the details of our lives, then one of our responses is... we struggle with and try to put aside worry. That's a response, and that honors God when we try to live a new way in response to him. If God is a god who's really in control and has our best in mind, then we stop manipulating things and try to organize everything within our power. And we release some of that in trust to God. So we depend on his character. All of this is hallowing the name of the Lord, honoring him... the positive side of the third commandment... knowing God for who he is and letting that shape our praise, our confession, our prayer, and ultimately our lives.

I'd like us to do that for just a few moments to close this part of our worship. In just a moment I'm going to put a passage from the book of Romans chapter 5 up on the screen. We're going to read it, think about for a moment silently, and then I'm going to lead us in a time of prayer as we respond to what God reveals about himself.

So let's start with Romans chapter 5, beginning at verse 6:

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Let's just take a moment to think about that.

Lord God, what you've revealed about yourself is that when we were still powerless, when we had no ability to be reconciled to you, while we were still sinners, while we were still looking in the wrong direction, while we were still enemies, Christ died for us. Lord, that's an amazing thing... that your love is such a love that while we were still distant from you, you did this. You died for us. You didn't require that we first come back to you, that we first in some way show that we want to be at peace with you, but you reached out to us.

Lord, a love like this is a love that is the kind of love that we look for in fiction. We look for a love that can be this big and this forgiving and yet it's a real thing. And all the fiction merely reflects the reality that's here, that you, our creator God, loves us so much that while we were still distant, you died for us. And Lord, we know how you want to still show that love in this world because not everybody has responded to that love. And yet we know that we're not willing to show love this way because it costs something.

God, I look at the cost that it was to you, and I'm afraid of the cost if I try to love like you, if I try to walk with you and experience this world with you. It makes me afraid. And so I confess that before you. But Lord, we know that you still want to show that love. And so now as we look around us, we see people who right now need to know that love in a special way. It might be people who are dealing with grief. It might be people who are dealing with illness. It might be people who are far away from their family, dealing with brokenness, conflict. Lord, help us now, as we silently think about these people who surround us... Lord, help us now to pray that you will send the blessings of your love on these, our friends and family.

And so now, Lord, as we ask you to show your love to them, we recognize you can do this sovereignly just in their minds and hearts. But Lord, you might want to send someone to be the face of your love to them. And Lord, if for some people that's us that you want to send, then we make our lives available to you so that we might be the face of your love, the messenger of your goodness to someone whom you love... for we ask all of this in Jesus' name, Amen.

© 2009, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org