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Stephen Ministry

We are continuing in our series on the Ten Commandments. Today, the third commandment: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name," (Exodus 20:7).

It might seem somewhat strange to us to consider a commandment regarding the Lord’s name because we’re not exactly clear about God’s name. Is it God? Is it Lord? Is it Jesus Christ? All of the above?

For the Jews at the time of Moses and the 10 Commandments there was no question about God’s name…and its importance. To begin with, recall that the culture of that time and place had a gaggle of gods and they all had names. There was the Canaanite god, Baal, for instance, and the goddess, Asherah, a female consort with Baal. All of the foreign gods within the culture surrounding the Israelites had names. Consequently, we get the exchange between God and Moses at the burning bush story in Exodus 3. God calls Moses to a daunting task—return to Egypt and free the Israelite slaves. Understandably, Moses doesn’t feel up to the task and we get this dialogue between Moses and God (in Ron Holmes paraphrase):

Moses: Who am I to be doing this!

God: Do not worry for I will be with you.

Moses: Well, no offense, but who are you?

And that becomes the name for God. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament I AM WHO I AM is the letters Y-H-W-H, pronounced "Yahweh" we believe, although no one knows for sure as the Hebrew language began to die out and was resurrected again several hundreds of years later. The name for God appears to have its roots in the "to be" verb of Hebrew, h-y-h. Thus, I AM WHO I AM, or, I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE. The name for God appears over 6,000 times in the Old Testament. In most English translations of the Old Testament you can tell where the name, Yahweh…Y-H-W-H, appears by the use of the word "Lord" (all caps). Yahweh, the name for God. I AM WHO I AM. Pretty good name for God, don’t you think? And it’s important how we use God’s name.

Many years ago, shortly after I graduated from college, I refereed basketball for a little extra income. The problem was my work kept me from refereeing organized basketball, like high school games, because I was broadcasting those games as a part of my job. So, I refereed city league basketball which is the bottom of the food chain in competitive basketball. No coaches, at least in the sense of high school or college coaches, so little or no authority in place over the players. Put a bunch of frustrated ex-athletes into a league with little or no controls in place and you have a tough assignment, much tougher than organized basketball. Needless to say, one received a lot of grief. Many times a player would miss a shot, make a bad pass, or feel like he’d been fouled and me, the ref, didn’t call it. Consequently, the referees took a lot of, shall we say, verbal abuse. Oftentimes that verbal abuse would include several violations of the third commandment! My response was this: Someone takes a shot, feels like they were fouled and you didn’t call it and would look at me and say, "Jesus Christ!" And I would run past them and say, "Not his fault, bud." The players loved me!

Interesting, don’t you think, that the Lord’s name is used in cursing? Jesus Christ. God _ _ _ _ _ _! I think it’s an example of spiritual warfare and a sign of the truth as to who God and Jesus Christ are. If I were Satan, or a force of evil in the world and wanted to tarnish the image of God I’d want to see that God’s name was used in a demeaning way. And therein lays God’s protection and provision in this commandment. God wants to protect us from losing awe and reverence for His name. Conversely, God wants to provide for us that kind of awe and reverence for Him. In another sense, part of the protection and provision of this commandment is for God. Reputations are at stake in the use of somebody’s name. God’s reputation is at stake in how we use God’s name. And so we must be careful we don’t misuse God’s name.

For the Jews, the solution was easy. Never say it. Literally. Rather than saying the name Yahweh, the Jews use another Hebrew word for "lord," Adonai. If you were to walk into a Jewish service in a synagogue today and they were reading from the Old Testament, whenever the word Y-H-W-H appears they would say "Adonai" rather than Yahweh. Can’t violate the commandment if you never say God’s name!

However, that misses part of the point. The commandment to not misuse God’s name has more to it than simply how we say God’s name. The commandment is also a caution in being cavalier in linking God and His reputation, His name, to various causes. "We cannot fail because God is with us." "God told me to…" We all know of horrible things done supposedly in the name of God or with God’s direction.

Remember the Smothers Brothers TV show of the late 60’s? Very controversial in it’s day, Tom and Dick Smothers often used their show to make political comments, some of which didn’t make it past the censors. Yes, there were censors for television in those days. One I remember that did make it past the censors was a comment about war. A sequence of actors, dressed in various military uniforms from various countries and ethnic groups—some in historic opposition to one another—and each saying basically the same thing, "We cannot fail because God is with us."

One aspect of the greatness of Abraham Lincoln was his humility concerning invoking God’s name in his cause. In response to someone’s question about whether or not God was on the Union side, Lincoln said, "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right." And in his second inaugural address, Lincoln delivered this famous line in closing, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…" (underline mine). It seems to me Lincoln had a good grasp of the caution contained in the third commandment.

Yet, it is not just major things, like wars, in which we should use caution in linking God’s name to our cause. We can be guilty of invoking God’s name and approval for relatively small things. Back in the days when I worked at the radio station, the FM side of the station played contemporary Christian music. Consequently, we would get some interesting letters or visitors invoking God’s name in one form or another. For example, periodically we would have someone show up at the station saying, "God told me I’m supposed to work here." What do you do with that? Here’s a sincere person of strong faith who has earnestly prayed and feels that God has responded to their prayers by endorsing them to work at KFKZ. What would you do with that? We learned quickly that the seemingly appropriate response was, "Fill out an application and if God leads us to the same conclusion we’ll be in touch." Occasionally, we would get someone who objected to the style of one of the songs we had played. Yeah, imagine that, someone objecting to a style of Christian music! I remember one time when someone came to the station and I was the only employee of the FM station present so I got to deal with him. He said to me that we had played a song the other day that had more to do with sexual intercourse than the Bible. He actually said that. Now, we were located on the FM dial right next to a hard rock station so I first assumed he had simply been on the wrong station. As I fleshed out a little more from him, however, it became clear he was talking about a song we play. We kept a printout of every song that played, including the day and time it played. As he said more about the song and when he heard it I was able to discover the actual song he was referring to. It was a song about the Bible! It was an up tempo song with electric guitars and drums, but it was about the Bible. I guess he felt that the beat was more about sexual intercourse than the song was about the Bible. Anyway, as I ushered him toward the door, he wanted to say that he hoped we would pray for guidance from God, that God would work on our hearts about the music we played. I responded something like this, "As a matter of fact, the staff gathers for prayer every day about the station and our work here. And we will be praying for you next time that God will work on your heart about the music we play." It was shortly after that I was taken off public relations detail!

But the point is this—too often and too quickly we invoke God’s name as supporter for our cause, whatever that cause may be. I have had conversations with people in the midst of unhappy marriages and on the verge of an adulterous affair invoking God’s endorsement of the affair because it seemed so right and the circumstances were in place. Too often and too quickly we invoke God’s name in support of our cause. We should be very careful in doing so.

The sum of our purpose regarding God’s name is to worship Him and proclaim His name great throughout the whole earth. "I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving," (Psalm 69:30). "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you," (Psalm 22:22). "Therefore I will praise you, Lord, among the nations; I will sing the praises of your name," (Psalm 18:49). "Like your name, O God, your praise reaches to the ends of the earth," (Psalm 48:10a). Let us be faithful in praising and proclaiming the name of our Lord throughout the earth…and faithful in not diminishing or demeaning the Lord by what we say or do in His name.