The Third Word - Respect
- Brian Ballinger
- Jul 18, 2010
- Series: The Ten Words
Third Word: Respect (The Ten Words)
Reconnect – July 18, 2010
Text: Exodus 20:1-2, 7; Psalm 96:1-5
Key Thought: God loves everyone too much to let His people get away with disrespecting Him in any way.
Then God gave the people all these instructions: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery... You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.” Exodus 20:1-2, 7, NLT
Pre-Intro: Respect (Aretha)
Intro: What’s in a name?
Q: Someone name a well-known brand. Then, someone else say what that brand is known for – positive or negative. If you disagree or have something to add on a certain note, go ahead.
- In our consumer-driven culture, branding is everything – what your name says about you indicates whether you will succeed or fail
- Companies spend millions to put their brand in your consciousness, and to give it a positive sense – and they will spend millions more to keep it there
- And yet, for all their careful handling, sometimes outside forces conspire to change what the public thinks – witness “BP”, “Tiger Woods”, “RCMP” – all brands that have fallen very hard in recent months
- As a business, as a brand – your name – has a whole lot wrapped up in it – your reputation, your work, your expertise, the way you are perceived by the world – not to mention that it is who you are
People are no different
- It’s reflected in the personal, too
Q: What does it mean to have “a good name”? How do you get it, how do you keep it, how could it be lost?
- A good reputation is worth so much, and so easy to lose – we want to be able to control our image, to have a positive association in the minds of those around us, or at least the people that we care about, or care about what they think of us
- As parents, we labour and stress over what to name our children – we want them to have a name that’s cool, or at least that’s not going to get them beat up on the way home from school, a name that’s going to have a positive connotation – in short, something that’s going to give them a leg up in the world, that’s going to have them start a little ahead of others
- Even though it is changing, still the vast majority of those who get married choose to also share a name – to take someone else’s name – to be known alongside them, to be connected to them in a fundamental way, a question of identity
- Names are a way we make judgments – a way that we interact with people – what’s the first thing we tell people when we meet them? Our names – and then, as conversation goes, often the names of those around us who are important to us
- And then again, if you want to commit fraud or crime, you change your name in some way – take on an alias – deceive people
- It used to be that when you went into business, that your business was a reflection of your name (“These are the Daves I know I know”) – and that a mark of pride was that your name was on it
- But now, with the rise of corporations and the prevalence of lawsuits, it’s much more recommended to start a numbered company and do your business under it – that way, if something goes wrong, the liability isn’t yours – you’re “protected”, just the people and businesses around you AREN’T – you can go bankrupt and not suffer liability in the losses, and then turn around, start yourself another corporation and off you go again
- Names matter – they are a huge part of who we are
God has a name, too
- It might have something to do with how people were created – by a God who had a Name as well
- We often might call Him God, but that’s more a title than a name – what He is, the role He plays
- He has a more personal name, a name that He chose for Himself, that reflects who He is, and even better, who He promises to be to people
- It’s a name that He revealed to people close to Him in the Old Testament, as He worked to accomplish His plan, to bring His life and love to all people through having an incredible close relationship with one specific group of people
- When Moses meets God for the first time, God reveals Himself by the name of YHWH – “I am” – “I am all that you will need me to be” – “I am who I will be” – a personal name, an exclusive access from the Creator of the Universe, to show these people how loved they were
- To have that personal a relationship with a person can be both a privilege and a stress – a privilege that you are chosen in such a way, but a stress in the responsibility that can come from it – like knowing a superhero’s secret identity, and then being a potential target of the bad guys because of it
- God entrusts His personal name to this people Israel – and He wants them to know just how important that is, what that means to Him – and He does it by making it a topic of one of these ten foundational words to them:
Then God gave the people all these instructions: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery... You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.” (Exodus 20:1-2, 7, NLT)
&$^@#$%!
Q: What, traditionally, have you felt was associated with this commandment? What is this saying that we shouldn’t do? (blaspheme, swear)
- Yep – THIS is that one – I thought, actually, about getting a T-shirt printed with “O my Gord” printed on it – we have a whole cottage industry in our culture of ways to not blaspheme, swearstitutes, from “Oh my goodness” to “Cheese and Fries” – and a whole bunch of other ways to do so
- Our basis of profanity might not be religious-based, but certainly one way to swear is to blaspheme
- Ironically, though, the more I read about this commandment, the less it was about cussing
- If all we take from it is to watch our potty mouth, then we’ve missed it
“Misuse”
- The key to getting a better handle on this commandment is to focus on that word “misuse” – because that’s where a lot of confusion can come in
- The way the original Hebrew is phrased is just about unique in the Bible – the key word is nasa - and it has a whole lot of uses in the Bible – “carry, lift, bear”
- “You must not ‘wrongly bear’ God’s name – ‘wrongly lift up’ God’s name – ‘wrongly carry’ God’s name
- Listen to what Rob Bell says about it:
The Hebrew word for “misuse” here can also be translated “carry.” God has redeemed these former slaves and is now inviting them to be representatives in the world of this redemption and the God who made it happen. They are how the world will know who this God is. God’s reputation is going to depend on them and how they “carry” God’s name. The command is certainly about the words a person speaks. But at its heart it is far more about how Israel carries herself as those who carry the name of God.
Rob Bell, Jesus Wants To Save Christians, p34
- If people that God has a relationship with can be seen as “carrying” God’s name – as holding it up, like a banner, or wearing it like a T-shirt, like a brand – then suddenly, this is about much more than swearing – this goes to the heart of identity, of association, of what God’s name stands for with the world at large
- Here are these people, coming out of a hyperreligious context, where there was a different god for everything, where gods acted just like humans, except that they could always get away with it, where gods were feared because they were unpredictable and greedy, and the answer to dealing with them was to try to control them with worship or offerings or good deeds or lip service
- And this God who has rescued them says “I’m not like any of this stuff – we’re going to have a different kind of relationship – and ultimately, you are going to show the world what I’m like – and here’s how you’re going to start” – and He begins to lay out what life with Him as God is going to be like
- Generally the experts in my basement figure there are likely three dimensions to what God is telling His people here, all grouped around the idea of respecting His name, that they need to stay away from
1) Control – the prime way to interact with a god was to try to control him or her – through magic, through incantations, through (!) learning their special, personal name – if you could do that, you could control them – and scholars even figure there might have been a hint of that in Moses’ question to God at the burning bush “What is your name”? But right off the bat, God gives it to Moses, at the same time telling him, “It’s too big for you, little man” – God won’t be controlled by anyone, and He won’t have his people pretending that they can control Him, either
And today? We might think we’re past magic – but when someone on TV or in a book says that there is a certain, surefire way to pray? Yep... you’re back into it – we’re called to pray in the name of Jesus, but it’s not meant to be an “abracadabra” kind of thing
2) Manipulation – if you couldn’t control your God, then the next best thing would be to let on to everyone else around you that you were in tight with Him – because that would let you manipulate them so that you could get your own way – so people would pray fine-sounding prayers and impress people – or they would make promises using God’s name as a guarantee – and again, God wasn’t going to let shysters and cheats take advantage of other people by using His name to look honest – Jesus was especially hard on religious people for this, because for them, too often it was a question of image over true relationship, pride instead of humility, because they liked the lifestyle that went with being “on the God squad”
And today? There are still people who try to impress with how close they are to God – and we’re always looking to take advantage of others – look at Survivor and other reality shows, where people make promises to each other and will “swear on their kids’ lives” and all other kinds of craziness – God will not be used to justify a lie, or to live as a hypocrite – there are consequences to leading a double life, and it comes at the worst time, guaranteed
3) Trivializing – you might decide that in a culture where serving God was what good people did, that you wanted to be a rebel instead, and impress with how little you thought of God – by trivializing Him, thinking yourself to be past Him, looking at those people who loved Him as being bound by superstition and folklore, as simple people who didn’t know better – and this might be the closest that this commandment would have gotten to our kind of cussing
And today? Beyond the cussing, there’s the idea of pooh-poohing God – as good for others, a crutch, something used to comfort the simpleminded, rather than for the people who are smarter, or cooler, or more independent – but God is ignored or pushed aside at a person’s peril, too...
- The nation of Israel, as much as they struggled with keeping these commands, took them seriously – YHWH’s name was sacred – to the point where centuries later, they wouldn’t even say the name YHWH for fear of somehow disrespecting it, even unconsciously, and so breaking the commandment
- We might look at that today and think how silly it is – and yet, that kind of respect can only be a good thing, especially if done out of love – because love and relationship makes all the difference
- Our choices, what we do, when we have identified with God, well, it reflects on His brand, it reflects on Him and what He’s trying to accomplish in the world
- We worry that our kids are reflecting badly on us, but yet in our more sane moments, we know we can’t control them completely – we know that they will make their own choices – but we still work to try to impact them positively, because at the end of the day, they are OURS – and on the whole, who they are and what they do is a reflection of us – and God is no different a parent than we are like that
Key Thought:
God loves everyone too much to let His people get away with disrespecting Him in any way.
Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord!
Sing to the Lord; praise his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves.
Publish his glorious deeds among the nations.
Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! He is to be feared above all gods.
The gods of other nations are mere idols, but the Lord made the heavens!
Psalm 96:1-5, NLT
Conclusion: “All-Access”
Q: Name a celebrity that you think you would like to hang out with for a day, for whatever reason
- Imagine that somehow, they heard about you, that you were such a fan, and then they got ahold of you – they called you – what a moment!
- And then, coming out of that call, they gave you their personal cell phone number – their direct line – if you ever wanted to talk to them again
- For a person who had a long line of people always trying to speak to them – well, that’s a huge gift
- It would be pretty huge – and God giving Moses and the people His personal name is on the line of that kind of connection
- But what if there was more? What if instead of a cellphone, they actually came to visit you – they spent time with you directly, face to face? And got to know you, and you could get to know them?
- Because that’s what happened when Jesus came – the face of God for us to see – God in action, in our world, “with skin on”
- Forget celebrity – this is now relationship – this is friendship – this is community and connection and transformation, because the person you are near is so good and so different all at the same time
- Listen to how Pastor Craig Groeschel describes it, in his very worthwhile book The Christian Atheist:
[read excerpt from The Christian Atheist, pp.41-42]
- Where is your relationship with God? What kind of name do you have for Him? Is it a matter of respect? Less? Or is it even more? What kind of relationship COULD it be?
- Because in all of our failings and wanderings and flaws, still this incredible “I am who I will be” comes near to us, giving all for us, including His very life, so that we can be like Him
Response: Yahweh (U2)
