Exodus 20:7
Sunday Morning Bible Study
May 4, 2008
Introduction
First Commandment: God is number one (no other gods)
Second Commandment: Get the picture right (no graven images)
The third commandment:
(Exo 20:7 NKJV) "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.
The value of a name
In our society, a name doesn’t quite mean the same as it did back in Bible times. We tend to name our kids more for what sounds good rather than what a name means. Names like Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Emily, Emma, Madison, Abigail, and Olivia (top names of 2000).
Some people change their names, not because of what the names means but more likely because of how it sounds (can you guess what they changed their names to??):
Jennifer Anastassikis changed to Jennifer Aniston
Betty Joan Perske changed to Lauren Bacall
O'Shea Jackson changed to Ice Cube
Ernest Evans changed to Chubby Checker
Paul David Hewson changed to Bono
Eugene Maurice Orowitz changed to Michael Landon
Whereas names aren’t much more than a sound to us, in Bible Times a name meant something.
Often a name was a hint as to a person’s character.
Nabal meant “fool”
Hezekiah meant “Yahweh is my strength”
Hephzibah (Hezekiah’s wife) meant “My delight is in her”
Jesus, Joshua, means “Yahweh is salvation”
And yes, even Bible people changed their names, but not because of the sound of the name, they changed their name because they had changed:
Abram (exalted father) became Abraham, “father of a multitude”
Jacob meant “tricky heal-catcher”, somebody you shouldn’t trust. God changed his name to Israel (governed by God)
The name of God (hwhy) is based on four Hebrew letters, equivalent to our letters Y, H, W, H. Ancient Hebrew was written only with consonants, no vowels. The best we can guess as to how to pronounce those letters would be “Yahweh”.
Later in the history of the Jews, they became concerned that they might forget how to pronounce their language and they developed a series of dots and dashes that they put above, in the middle, and below the original letters. But when they came to the name of God, they were concerned that people might misuse God’s name. Because of the commandment that we are looking at today, they made a decision to put the vowels for “adonai” (the Hebrew word for “lord”) into the name of God. When you are taught beginning Hebrew, and you come up to the name of God, you are tempted to pronounce it the way it looks, the vowels for adonai and the consonants YHWH, which put together sound like “yeh-hoo-wah”. But your teacher quickly corrects you and you learn to pronounce the word as “adonai”. As I’ve taught you, your English Bibles use the same sort of thing, using the word “LORD” with all capital letters to give you a clue that God’s name is in the text. By the way, if you were German, you would spell the word “yeh-hoo-wah” as “Jehovah”
If Bible names have meanings, then what does “Yahweh” mean?
It is based on the verb “to be” and could be translated as “the becoming one” or the “always is one”. God is always present, always has been, always will be. He transcends time. He is currently at work in the past, in our present, and in our future, all at the same time.
A few chapters later from our passage, Moses wants to know God better. What he will experience will involve the name of God. Remember that the name describes the person. Moses asks God…
(Exo 33:18-19
NKJV) …"Please, show me Your
glory." {19} Then He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before
you, and I will proclaim the name of the
LORD before you…
Later Moses will have his closest encounter with God ever where God will “proclaim” or give a better idea what His name is all about:
(Exo 34:5-8 NKJV) Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood
with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. {6} And the LORD passed
before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, {7} "keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the
children's children to the third and the fourth generation." {8} So Moses
made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.
Yahweh is a name that is to be associated with mercy, grace, patience, goodness, and truth. It is a name that is supposed to make us think of forgiveness as well as judgment.
This third commandment is going to deal with God’s name.
:7 "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 grew up thinking that this was the “don’t swear or say bad words” commandment. Is that what this is all about? Let’s look at some of the words used.
shall not take – nasa’ – to lift, carry, take; some translate it “attach to”; A very common word – used 654 times. Look how it’s used:
Gen 7:17 …The waters increased
and lifted up the ark…
Gen 27:3
"Now therefore, please take
your weapons, your quiver and your bow…
Gen 44:1 …"Fill the men’s sacks with food, as
much as they can carry…
How is it that we “carry” or “take” the Lord’s name?
Ex 28:12
"And you shall put the two stones on the shoulders of the ephod [as]
memorial stones for the sons of Israel. So Aaron shall bear their names before the
LORD on his two shoulders as a memorial.
The
priests had two stones on the shoulder of their garment with the names of the
tribes of Israel engraved on them. The
“bore” the names on their shoulders.
In our verse, perhaps we could look at this as “wearing” the name of the Lord. Don’t wear God’s name in vain.
Ps 16:4 …Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, Nor take up their names on my lips.
Here is means to speak the name.
The Jews have taken this idea with great seriousness. They will not mention God’s name, Yahweh, out of fear that they have spoken it in an unworthy manner and transgress this commandment. Their documents today will spell God’s name as “G-d” or simply “The Name” (Ha Shem)
in vain – shav’ – emptiness, falsehood; nothingness; emptiness, lying
One commentary has this as “to lift it up or attach God’s name to emptiness”
I want to suggest five ways that we can be living out this commandment.
Lesson #1
Don’t use God to excuse your lies
As humans, we like to lie. We get pretty good at it. Sometimes we get so good at it that people can’t tell when we’re telling the truth. That’s how the swearing of an oath got started.
If you don’t believe me because I promise I’m telling the truth, perhaps you’ll believe me if I swear to God that I’m telling the truth. Our courts have you place your hand on a Bible and swear.
God did allow people to “swear”, to make an oath using His name:
(Deu 6:13
NKJV) "You shall fear the LORD your
God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name.
Under the Law, if a man swore in the name of God, then you were supposed to believe him.
(Exo 22:10-11
NKJV) "If a man delivers to his
neighbor a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or any animal to keep, and it dies, is hurt,
or driven away, no one seeing it, {11} "then an oath of the LORD shall be between them both, that he has not put
his hand into his neighbor's goods; and the owner of it shall accept that, and
he shall not make it good.
But God has a problem when people use Him as their excuse to lie to other people:
(Lev 19:12
NKJV) 'And you shall not swear by My
name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
Some businessmen need help with their reputation. They use God as their crutch. They advertise in the Christian business directory. They have a fish on their store window. And once you hire them, you find that you’ve been taken advantage of.
Jesus said,
(Mat 5:33-37 NKJV) "Again you have heard that it was said
to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to
the Lord.' {34} "But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven,
for it is God's throne; {35} "nor by the earth, for it is His footstool;
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. {36} "Nor shall
you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. {37}
"But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' For whatever is more
than these is from the evil one.
God wants us to be men and women who keep their word. When we promise to meet a client, we ought to show up on time. When we advertise a certain service, we ought to deliver. Jesus doesn’t want us to have to use God’s name to bolster our reputation, we ought to honor His name with our reputation.
Lesson #2
The name isn’t magical
People are always looking for magical powers.
There are some who would look at God’s name as if it had magical powers.
In the mediaeval Toledoth Yeshu, a popular work written by the Jews to discredit the gospel, it says,
“In the Temple was to be found the Foundation Stone on which were engraven the letters of God's Ineffable Name. Whoever learned the secret of the Name and its use would be able to do whatever he wished.”
The writings go on to claim that Jesus was so powerful and did so many miracles because He learned the secret of the name of God.
When Paul’s ministry in Ephesus was taking exploding, there were a group of Jewish exorcists travelling the countryside casting out demons with a new miracle formula:
(Acts 19:13
NKJV) Then some of the itinerant Jewish
exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those
who had evil spirits, saying, "We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul
preaches."
Hocus Pocus – recall those magic words? It is thought to be a corruption of the Latin words “hoc est corpus” (here is the body), words used in the Catholic mass when the priest is supposedly turning the bread into the literal body of Christ. Magicians taking the words and making them into magical mumbo-jumbo, an excuse to deceive people.
As Christians, we need to be careful that we don’t take the phrase “in Jesus’ name” as our own little magical formula. Some people will quote:
(John 14:14
NKJV) "If you ask anything in My
name, I will do it.
And they have this notion that as long as they tack on the magical words “in Jesus’ name”, that God has to answer that prayer.
What does it mean to ask “in Jesus’ name”?
I think it means to ask in the “character of Jesus” – does this request match the kind of things that I know about Jesus, about His name? Is this something that Jesus would ask? If Jesus were standing right here with us now, is this something that He would ask?
The power isn’t in the “magical” name, it’s in the God who honors prayer.
When Jesus taught about prayer, He said,
(Mat 6:9 NKJV) "In
this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed (“holy”) be Your name.
Lesson #3
Cursing and swearing
Mock Buddha and you’ll hear from the ACLU. Draw a cartoon about Mohammed
and you might start receiving death threats. But use the name of Jesus Christ
in any manner whatsoever and no one will even raise an eyebrow.
J. Vernon McGee writes,
Many people cannot express themselves without using profanity. A man who
was wonderfully converted several years ago in Texas once told me, “When I was
converted, I lost over half of my vocabulary!” And this is what he meant.
When someone says, “God damn it”, the words they are using are asking God to send that thing to eternal damnation, to send something to hell. But that’s not what a person really means when they say those words; they just become a stupid expression of anger.
Desensitization – people don’t understand that the name of God is something that saves you, not something that helps you let off steam when you stub your toe.
It’s the name of God that was meant to save you, not curse you.
When Peter and John healed a lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ”, they were put on trial for what they had done…
(Acts 4:8-12
NKJV) Then Peter, filled with the Holy
Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: {9}
"If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what
means he has been made well, {10} "let it be known to you all, and to all
the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you
crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before
you whole. {11} "This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders,
which has become the chief cornerstone.' {12} "Nor is there salvation in
any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we
must be saved."
May we help change people’s perception about the name of Jesus.
May it no longer be a thing of cursing and damnation.
May it be the name by which men are saved.
(Rom 10:13 NKJV) For
"whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved."
Lesson #4
Connecting the wrong things to God
If the idea is to not “attach God’s name to emptiness”, then perhaps we might be guilty of this when we attribute the wrong things to God.
This is one of many reasons why God hates false prophets. They are giving people the wrong idea about God.
(Jer 23:16-17
NKJV) Thus says the LORD of hosts:
"Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make
you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of
the LORD. {17} They continually say to those who despise Me, 'The LORD has
said, "You shall have peace" '; And to everyone who walks according
to the dictates of his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall come upon
you.'"
In Jeremiah’s day, the people had become quite wicked. They needed to change some things. They needed to turn their lives around. They were like people addicted to meth, but all the religious people were saying were, “Don’t worry, be happy”. They were saying things that God wasn’t saying.