The Name

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,

for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain."

I've been pondering this third commandment, and wondering how many ways there are to misuse the Name of the Lord. In my last post I mentioned some of them, but let's go back.

Employing the Names of God in cursing, cussing and swearing...that's blasphemy.

Using God's Name to seal an oath.

Saying the Name in careless and thoughtless exclamation.

Invoking the Name in vain prayers and proclamations.

Imposing the Name upon something that is not from Him.

Those are just a few. I appreciate my friend Will's comments: Vain living equals vain speaking. If we, as believers, choose to live and act like unbelievers, we falsely apply the Name of God to our lives. When we willfully sin, we sully the Name by which we can be saved.

Teaching false doctrine, by which I mean teaching things that are insupportible in Scripture, takes the Name of God in vain. Preaching strange sayings and practices that do not bring honor to Jesus Christ takes the Name of God in vain. Misusing the power of the Spirit for your own purposes takes the Name of God in vain. There will be many in the day of judgment who cry out, "Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name? Didn't we do miracles and cast out demons in your name?" But Jesus will say to them, "Go away, for I don't know who you are!"

Jesus told His disciples, "If you abide in me, and My words abide in you, you can ask anything in My Name, and it shall be given to you. But you must ask in faith, without doubting." John added in his first epistle that if we pray anything in the will of the Father, it shall be done. I am convinced that all these people who claim to have super faith are using God's name in vain every time they employ the Name of Jesus to pray their own will upon the world around them.

However many ways there are to misuse the Name of God, look at the consequences of doing so even trivially: God will not hold you guiltless. It almost sounds like it's something He won't forgive; at least He won't let it go lightly. That's why we need to be so careful how we use the Name, and how we represent the Name.

Jesus assured us in the Gospels that blasphemy against the Father would indeed be forgiven. Blasphemy against the Son would be forgiven. But the one sin God will never forgive is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. That may be a discussion for another time, but remember this...God doesn't like it when we ascribe His Name to something that is not His; and neither does He like it when we deny His Name in something that is His.

All in all, we just need to be sure of God's thoughts on a matter before we start using His Name toward it.

The Third Commandment

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain."

I've always heard this commandment applied to blasphemous speech. You know, you shouldn't swear, curse or cuss using the words "God" and "Jesus Christ". You should never use them in exclamation, as in "Oh my God" or "Jesus Christ!". You should never, never say, "I swear to God". And I absolutely agree with all of those...you should not use the Name of God in a careless or blasphemous way. But there is an ever deeper application that I believe has been neglected in the church because so many Christians are guilty of it.

Taking the Name of the Lord our God in vain is not simply using His Name as a swear word; it is invoking His Name to bless something in which He has not been consulted. It is invoking His name to proclaim something that He has not said. It is invoking His Name as an authority in a matter which He has not approved.

It's the constant danger we face among people who believe we can currently and constantly hear directly from God. When we pray, we expect Him to answer. When we inquire, we expect Him to direct. When we seek, we expect to find. However, we also need to realize that His is not the only voice that can be heard in our hearts.

Sometimes we hear ourselves talking and mistake it for the Lord. Our imagination can sometimes impose His voice in a dub-over of our thoughts, and thereby we convince ourselves that what we are thinking is truly the mind of God. Sometimes, the devil can employ a deception that sounds almost God-like, and if we are not discerning, we can fall prey to his lies. Sometimes we hear the words of someone else, spoken to us in advice or at times as a prophetic word from the Lord for us, and we mistakenly assume that just because someone says, "Thus says the Lord," we should always take it to heart as direction from on high. People can be just as guilty as our own imagination and the devil of trying to manipulate and control our lives.

This is why the Apostle John says, "Don't believe every Spirit, but test and try the spirits, holding on to that which is true." We need to be discerning when we think we hear the voice of God; and we need to make absolutely certain that we have indeed heard from God before we start using His name and saying, "God told me so!"

Consequences

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image--

any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth;
You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
but showing mercy to thousands,
to those who love Me and keep My commandments."

There are things about God that bother some people. Most everybody likes to hear about the God of love, full of mercy and compassion and forgiveness. Not many like to hear that he is vengeful or jealous. And yet one place He says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." And here he says, "I am a jealous God." He is absolutely clear about this, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind. He alone is God; He alone is to be worshiped; and woe be unto those who don't honor Him with their lives.

Something else people don't like to hear is that sin has consequences. I'll never forget the words of my preacher daddy, heard so many times during my formative years: "If you get on the roller coaster, you have to wait 'til it stops to get off." In other words, sin is a decision we choose to make; but we need to be aware that for every action on our part, there is a reaction on God's part. And unlike the laws of physics (or whatever), it's not necessarily equal or opposite.

Sin separates us from God. Sin stops up His ears from our prayers. Sin corrodes and corrupts our lives, eating away at us from the inside out, and sometimes from the outside in. Paul writes in Romans 1 that we reap in our own bodies the consequences of our actions. Sin is a transgression against the will and nature of God, a falling short of His high standards of excellence. Such failures on our part are always sins against God, sometimes against another person, sometimes against our own body, and always against our own soul.

And there are always personal consequences for our sin. Of course we recognize that the wages of sin are death. What we often fail to realize is that the consequences may affect more than just ourselves. In His commentary on this second of commandments, God elaborates on His jealousy by saying that He will visit the sins of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate God. Consequences can be reaped in a person's life and family for decades to come because of what we thought was one little mistake. So be careful what you choose to do; the consequences could come back around to haunt you in the lives of your children or theirs.

But see that it says, "Of them that hate God". When we repent, He is faithful and fair, and He does forgive! We just need to to stay in a heart of repentance, and do what we can to put a stop to the cycle of sin and its consequences in our own lives and in the generations of our family. Because He shows love and mercy to the thousands of thsoe of who love Him and demonstrate their love by their obedience to His commandments.

To Make, To Worship, and To Serve

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image--
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,

or that is in the earth beneath,

or that is in the water under the earth;

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,

visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children

to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

but showing mercy to thousands,

to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

He told them they could have no other god besides Him. He told them not to make any kind of image as an object of worship. He told them they were not to bow in worship nor serve in obedience any kind of man-made god. Man-made gods and man-made religions are tools of enslavement inspired by the devil, designed to control people with rituals and rules. But God and His religion are not meant to control us; they are meant to bless us.

Everything about the nature and character of God, everything found in His word, demonstrates that He only wants to favor us with the best of heaven's blessings, the bounty of His riches, the power of His grace. God loves us, has always loved us, will always love us. But He has also created us and done all good things in us, for us and through us. We've already talked about His right to hand down these commandments from on high, but we need to understand...he did not do it for our detriment, but for our good.

Knowing that there is only one God, and having His Word to tell us everything we need to know about Him and about His will for our lives, makes life so simple. He never changes His mind; His word and His will are always constant; and He Himself is ever faithful. He is the one who has made us, not we ourselves. He is worthy of all our worship because of Who He is and what He has done. And to Him do we owe our service and obedience.

The Second Commandment

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image--

any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth;
You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
but showing mercy to thousands,
to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Imagine this.

A man walks into the woods with an axe and spends the morning chopping away at the base of a tree, first on one side, then the other. When the tree finally falls to the ground, he chops off a certain length and takes it back to his workshop, where with hammer and chisel and various carving tools he fashions the wood into a specific shape. Perhaps it is the image of a person, perhaps the form of an earthly creature, perhaps the imagined appearance of an unearthly thing. But once he is satisfied with his handiwork, he takes the carving into his house, sets it in a corner, and bows down to it in worship as his god.

It has eyes that cannot see. Ears that cannot hear. A mouth that cannot speak. Hands that cannot reach down and touch him in response to his petitions and praise. With his own hands he has fashioned for himself a god to which he ascribes the power of a deity, forgetting that he himself cut the tree down from which his god is made. But this was the nature of idol worship in the times and places of those liberated Israelites.

The great God of all that is is not such as those gods. He sees and hears, He knows and speaks, He touches with His own power and presence. He can neither be defined nor confined to the finite limitations of a carving of wood or statue of stone or any other physical representation of His personage, and He did not want His people to try and capture his likeness that way. We are the ones who have been made after the image and likeness of God; we are His representatives here on this terrestrial sphere; we are His physical reflection, fashioned to look like Him and to be like Him.

How could the product of our own hands ever be eternally and immortally more powerful and able than we? That idol will disintegrate with the passage of time, but you can't do away with the One True God.

No Other Gods

"I am the Lord your God,

who brought you out of the Land of Egypt,

out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before Me."

So when He says, "You shall have no other gods", what is He talking about? God gave these commands to His people just after they were delivered from slavery in a nation whose people had a god or goddess for everything. Ancient Egypt was the most god-filled nation of its time, but God had used ten plagues to demonstrate to them that their gods had no reality, substance or power. Osiris, Isis, and Ra had nothing on the Lord God of the Israelites.

Additionally, they were going to a land whose tribal culture was filled with a glut of gods and goddesses for every eventuality and occasion. Prominent among these were such as the fertility goddess Astoreth, the prosperity god Baal, and the blood thirsty god Molech. These had nothing on God either.

In fact, every culture on earth that did not maintain the knowledge and worship of the One True God eventually developed a paganistic pantheon of gods and goddesses to worship and serve, who were usually represented by images carved from inanimate wood and stone by the hands of the men who invented the gods. Whatever these deities were, whether demonic manifestations or imaginative constructs of the human mind, they never were anything and never will be anything other than figments and myths. The One True God, on the other, has continually demonstrated his Divine place as the Supreme of Supremes over all the universe.

Now some might point to the historical and cultural context of the first commandment and say, "Well, we don't worship those ancient gods, so this law doesn't apply to us." First of all, there are cultures who continue to venerate the deities of the past, but as I said before, every culture that does not maintain the knowledge and worship of the One True God will eventually develop its own worship structure.

So what are the gods of our culture? Money? Pleasure? Cars? Entertainment? Politics? Personal Freedom? There are many things honored in our culture above all other considerations. The truth of the first commandment is that we should give nothing a more important place in our lives than that place held by the One True God. He who created us, and who sent His only Son to die to save us, deserves the only place of worship in our lives, and when we have allowed something to be more important to us than serving, worshiping and obeying Him, we have created a god for ourselves.

The First Commandment

"I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods before Me."

By the time the Israelites received the Ten Commandments from God, they already had a 2500 years history of hearing from Him. Their oral traditions had preserved the Creation account, the genealogies of the descendants of Adam, the record of Noah, his ark and the great flood. 430 before Moses brought them to Sinai, God had changed the name of their ancestor Abram of Ur to Abraham, friend of God Most High, and for one hundred years, their Father Abraham lived a life of faith walking and talking with God. Abraham was the one who received a promise of a people and a nation; Isaac was the son in which Abraham's seed would be called; Jacob was the one with whom God wrestled personally and whose name was changed from conman to prince of God. The twelve patriarchs were recent memories of the oldest in the crowd, and their promise to Joseph had been personally fulfilled as they brought his bones with them out of Egypt. When these people heard the law of God being handed down from on high, they knew Who it was Who was speaking.

Many people today have no working concept of Who God is and what God has done. So when they hear the Ten Commandments or anything else from the Bible, they ask the question: "By what right has this God imposed His rules on us?"

God says it Himself, when giving this law to His people: I am the God who has brought you out of bondage and slavery in the Land of Egypt. He didn't have to tell them anything else, as they already had the rich heritage of knowing the Lord as the personal God of their people for 400 years. But it might benefit us to realize, He is the God who created all things; in Him do all things consist; by His will do all things continue; and for His pleasure do all things exist. He is the Supreme Being, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

He is the God who sees me, the God who knows me personally and calls me by name.

He is the God who did everything He could to reconcile me to Himself.

He is the God who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life!

He is the God who came personally in the form of a man and a servant that He might sympathize with us in our weaknesses; who humbled Himself in obedience, bearing our sin in His body on the cross, who shed His own blood and gave His own life to save those who would call upon His name for all eternity.

He is the God who turned on the lights, and will at the end of all things turn them off and make all things new in a spoken word.

So who is this God who lays down the law for us? He is, frankly, the only One who can rightfully do so. And He says we are to recognize no other gods than Him.

It's a New Month

Okay, so last month I was all about the Passion of Jesus Christ--his sinless suffering, his sacrificial death, his subsequent resurrection--and what a trip that was for me. I so enjoyed getting into those last days of Jesus before His trip to heaven. I took the last week off for personal reasons, but now I'm back and ready to start something new. I've got some ideas for the future, but something the Lord has been prompting in my heart is a return to His instructions for basic Godly living. Those life standards, immutable and unchangeable and irresistible, are summed up in Ten Commandments that have caused much ado among men since the day God's finger carved them in stone. In fact, these are the only rules He ever carved in stone, and they are as good for us today as they were 3500 years ago.

There is nothing in the Ten Commandments that is tied to a culture or period of time. There is nothing in the Ten Commandments that is defined by one specific people group or nation, or any one religion. There is nothing in the Ten Commandments that cannot be universally applied to all societies everywhere, because these are just basic tenets for life...good in theory, good in theology, good in practice. And I thought I might spend a few weeks exploring them. Reading through them again today opened my eyes to some things we tend to skip over or forget about, and I'll be sharing those thoughts over the course of this discussion. Please add your own thoughts about the Divine Decalogue, and let us draw closer to the heart of God.

And God spoke all these words, saying:

"I am the Lord your God,

who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before Me.

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image--
any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,

or that is in the earth beneath,

or that is in the water under the earth;

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,

visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children

to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

but showing mercy to thousands,

to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,

for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

In it you shall do no work:

you, nor your son, nor your daughter,

nor your male servant, nor your female servant,

nor your cattle,

nor your stranger who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,

the sea, and all that is in them,

and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

"Honor your father and your mother,

that your days may be long upon the land

which the Lord your God is giving you.

"You shall not murder.

"You shall not commit adultery.

"You shall not steal.

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house;

you shall not covet your neighbor's wife,

nor his male servant, nor his female servant,

nor his ox, nor his donkey,

nor anything that is your neighbor's."

Perhaps the most important thing for us to realize about the Ten Commandments is the statement that introduces them: And God spoke all these words. These aren't a bunch of rules Moses made up on Mount Sinai to impose dictatorial control over the lives of his people. These aren't the result of a committee imposing its sense of morality on the community. These are the very words of God, and they were given so that we would understand His character in our quest to be like Him. And He shows us here that the best way to be like Him is simply to hear and obey His words. He gave these commandments for our benefit, not our detriment.