Automatic Transcript Generated:
Speaker 1
All right, so Stephanie is asking, what does it mean to take God’s name in vain? A pastor on YouTube said that saying certain curse word that starts with a G and A means that you are asking God to curse something or someone. Is that true? And if so, would he? If he did that, what would that look like? Aren’t we protected by God from our enemies? It seems to me that certain words were not said by Christians when I was growing up, but now our scene is just meaningless words. I’m sorry if there’s a lot. Thanks.
Speaker 2
All right. Yes. Very poor question. Very important. Thank you for asking. Stephanie. And before I answer, I want to give a little shout out to Rachel. Thank you for joining us, Rachel. Glad to have you with us again. And anybody else, please let us know you’re here. So let’s dive into the name of the Lord. I think this is one of the most fascinating topics we could study for weeks, maybe on just what the name of the Lord is, but let’s talk about the misuse of it. So this comes in the context of the Ten Commandments and four of which concern our relationship with God. One is about our allegiance to God. The second commandment is about our faithfulness to God. The third one is about reverence, reverence of God. And the fourth one is about being present or presence with God, especially showing up when God wants us to be there. Looks like an Exodus 20, verse seven. This is that third commandment reads, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, or the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. And I like the NIV, too.
Speaker 2
Instead of using the word vain, the NIV says misuse. So NIB says for Exodus 27, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. But these are still not useful terms, right? What does vain mean? What does misuse mean? Let’s go back to the original Hebrew. And the Hebrew word for vain or misuse is the word shave. And shav can mean emptiness, vanity, falsehood, nothingness, lying, worthlessness, and interestingly. Shave comes from the word show, which could mean revenge, devastation, ruin, waste. So get this background. I think what God is trying to tell us here is he doesn’t want us to destroy the meaning and the significance of his name. Don’t make his name profane as in just ordinary, common, like any other name. He doesn’t want us to misrepresent Him or tarnish his reputation. Did he want to chime in tina okay, reputation. Making it out to be something that it’s not. So God doesn’t want that to happen. That’s sort of what he’s trying to say here. In my own words, I would say, of course, the Jews took this very seriously, and they basically said okay, to be on the safe side, let’s never use the actual name of the Lord.
Speaker 2
So they never pronounced it as they believe it really should be pronounced and they would never fully write it out either. So that’s right here about the tetragram, sorry, Y-H-V-H which we pronounce Jehovah or Yahweh that is missing the vowel. So there’s always this argument that OK, nobody knows how exactly to pronounce it and Jehovah is taking the name Adonai and plugin or the letters from that and plugging it into the YHVH, the interest impact on that one. So let’s take a step back though again, what’s the name of the Lord? And a lot of us just focus on the Jehovah or Yahweh and not using that name but also can’t apply, I would say, to the name of Jesus in his name. So his name really is Jesus the Christ. And how many of us go around saying I am Christian, I am a Christian right there and says you’re using the name of God and you’re connecting yourself with God sort of saying you’re his representative and you’re associated with Him. And now people are going to be judging God based on what you do. So we really should pause every time we’re about to say we’re Christian and really reflect on what we are saying there.
Speaker 2
And I’ll tell you, even the angels of heaven, look how they handle the name of the Lord. Revelation 48. It says the four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within and they do not rest day or night saying holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, who is and was to come. So this is like the scenes from heaven and this is not just a revelation. If you look at Isaiah, saw a similar thing of holy, holy, holy. God is just such a gap between us and Him. He’s so far beyond us, so far separated. And God wants us to remember that. Not because he wants a Lord over us necessarily, but it’s even for our benefit because then it puts all of us humans on the same plane. It helps keep us humble. Jesus was able to step away from all this and humble Himself. He proved that God is willing to also be humble, but he is totally deserving of whatever glory and exultation he has. Again, yeah, like Philippians two nine to eleven. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him Christ and given him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and of those in heaven and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Speaker 2
This is like God, this is the name above all names, whether you’re talking about Jesus or the Father, I mean they’re way, way beyond us, way above us. We should respect that him for our benefit. And because why? Because we love God. As Jesus said in Matthew two, verses 37 to 38, he says you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. It comes down to love. Those first four that I talked about are about how you love God. And if you love God, you’re going to use his name like you would someone you actually do love, right? How do you speak to your spouse? How do you use the name of your children? How do you use the name of your parents? Do you use their names like a curse word? Do you use it in a derogatory manner? And how about your family name and your family like your last name? Or maybe it’s the name you’re married into. How do you handle that name? Do you bring honor to your family by how you act and by how you live and what you do?
Speaker 2
It’s all the same when you’re in the family of Christ, we are telling people about Jesus, his character, what he is like. This is where I think this verse, Matthew seven, verses 21 to 23 is so important. Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. So you say, God is your Lord, but Jesus says you might not enter in heaven, but he who doesn’t, well, my Father in heaven, that’s the one that makes it. In verse 22 he says, Many will say to me in that day, lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Have we not cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name? So they’re doing anything in the name of Jesus. As a Christian, I do this in the name of Christ. They do that. They’re doing it left and right and they’re seeming like the religious people seemingly doing things right that God might want. But what does Jesus say? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you who practice all this. Just because we call ourselves a Christian doesn’t mean we really are one.
Speaker 2
And unfortunately the world doesn’t know that. If you call yourself a Christian, people take you out your word and then judge Christ by how you are acting. They will judge Christ and God by again how you speak of God. And so we have to so carefully not just what we say, but how we say it should always be in our mind because people’s relationships with God ultimately are at stake. People are turning away from God, rejecting Him, because they don’t see the real God through God’s, people through his church. And it is so sad. And I think this is what Jesus is talking about in Matthew seven. There’s going to be a lot of people surprised when the day of judgment comes because they thought, well, I was a Christian, I went to church and did all these things that Jesus is going to point out, no, you turned away a lot of my flock and that’s going to be a very sad moment. But let’s add on this really, again, God is going to give us a name, including his name. He’s adopting us. And when you get adopted, you get the name of the person adopted you right.
Speaker 2
And that’s what’s happening here. So Revelation 312, he who overcomes I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the name Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God and I will write on him my new name. That’s going to be amazing. That’s going to go beyond just being a part of his family. The more we have his name, the more we have his character and we get to be sharing. And if God is love, we will become like love too. And I can’t wait for that day. And let us all strive today to be more like them.
Speaker 1
And I think also just to more directly answer a couple of questions here on if we state this, are we saying that we’re asking God to curse someone or something? In a sense, yes. That is you know what that is and if so, would he? Well, if we ask God to curse someone, would God curse someone?
Speaker 2
That’s the Bible studying of itself.
Speaker 1
My personal belief is no, that’s contrary to God’s character, his goal is to love people and he wants us to know his love. But he may withhold there are times when God does withhold his protection of people, but not necessarily because we say something.
Speaker 2
Yes. What are the curses like? Noah called on his family, whether the curse is sort of that Jacob talked about and did God curse because Noah curse canaan it gets complicated. But yeah, ultimately if you look at those curses, god is just letting people suffer the consequences of their sins. That is ultimately what it is. And there was a story where the disciples got really angry and said, jesus, let’s call down fire on these people. And you remember how Jesus reacted? Not too well. He’s like, no. He always told disciples, you guys completely miss who I am. That’s not what I’m about. I’m not here to destroy, I’m not here to have revenge. God came not to condemn the world, but to save the world. John 317 and I think in this.
Speaker 1
Kind of situation that the greater risk is to the person who is using God’s name in a vain, profane kind of way. We are called to honor his name and to use it in this kind of a way is really upon us and separates us from God. Instead of drawing us near the God.
Speaker 2
Because God is love, he wants us to be loving, demonstrating that love being loved.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So God wants us to draw near to Him, to his love and to know that more and deep in that connection. So using his name in these kinds of ways is contrary to that. Yeah.
Speaker 3
But first, I want to acknowledge Nancy Gable. She has a really great comment where she says it’s sad that so many Christians in quotations give Christianity a bad name. I think that’s very true and I think that’s definitely what you touched on, Jay. And I just want to kind of answer the second part of the question a little bit, if that’s okay. At least what I see is being asked if I’m understanding this right to our viewers. Stephanie. And again, Stephanie, thank you so much for this great question. And basically you’re saying if you’re asking God to curse someone or something, is that true or would he do it? And like, when you say it goes against the very character of God. And so just because somebody says, GD this person or this thing, that doesn’t mean God is much bigger than us, you know what I mean? And so just like if you’re a parent and your kid goes, darn this thing, or whatever, my kids said, mom, curse this thing, I’d look at her and go like, no, what I do? That’s not who I am. You know what I mean? I would tell my child no.
Speaker 3
So just because God cursed this, because.
Seaker 2
God is from God’s perspective, from God’s perspective, it’s like you have two kids and one kid is asking the parent to curse and do bad things to the other kid.
Yeah.
Speaker 3
And it’s like, no, I’m sorry, I’m the parent, you’re the child. That’s not how it’s going to go. And so just because we say God, whatever, darn something, no, God’s not necessarily going to do that. That’s not his character at all. And there’s something just a really quick verse in one, Timothy three, chapter six. Timothy, chapter six. And verse one, I apologize, it says basically the apostle here is saying, let as many servants as are under the yoke count their masters worthy of all honor. That the name of God and his doctrine be not blasting. So we have to be very careful of the doctrine we are preaching. And it sounds like this person’s doctrine is not quite right. And you really have to be careful about doctrine like we kind of talked about. We always refer back to Isaiah, chapter eight, I believe it’s verse 20, where it says to the lawn, to the testimony. If they speak out according to this word, to the Bible, there is no light in them. So if this person is not speaking in harmony with God’s word, we really don’t need to be paying attention to some doctrine that’s just not biblical.
Speaker 3
Again, in Hebrews chapter 13, verse nine, the apostle Paul warns us, don’t be carried about with diverse or strange doctrines. Be careful about the doctrine that’s presented to you because it may or may not be true. Even if it’s mixed a little bit with the Bible, you really need to compare it to the Bible and all that. And when we look at this doctrine, if you curse somebody in the name of God, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be cursed. And actually very when I hear that, that breaks my heart because it’s a complete opposite of the doctrine that Jesus taught. When you look in Luke chapter six and verse 28, jesus says, bless them that curse you and pray for them which despitefully use you. So the very nature of Jesus is to bless people who are cursing them. And Jesus is saying, if you want to have my heart, my character of love, you need to bless people even if they are cursing at you or whatever main thing they’re doing. Your heart is not like the world. Your heart is to be the heart of Christ, and the heart of Christ is to bless and to love and to give and have that kind of spirit.
Speaker 3
And so any spirit, any doctrine that goes against God’s explicit word here, like we just see, don’t pay no attention. There’s going to be a lot of false doctrine that’s out there and we just have to focus on the truth.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and there’s so many verses if you study them. The secret to praying and having your prayers be answered is to pray according to the will of God. And so good praying is really getting understanding God what he wants and then asking for that. And so God doesn’t want curses, god doesn’t want anybody lost. God wants to see everybody brought unto salvation. And so that is a prayer we should really be asking for.
Speaker 1
And he wants his spirit to go forth and these persons are contrary to his spirit.
Speaker 2
All good points.
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BibleAsk Team
