How to Be a Human Being - OMG!

Continuing in our series about How To Be A Human Being the way God intended. It’s all about what we call the Ten Commandments—which are really one blessing about who God is and what He’s done for His people “I am the LORD your God who rescued you from slavery,” followed by nine commandments, nine statements about the kind of people you shall be and shall not be.

Last week we talked about how the Ten Commandments were given to Moses on two tablets, called the two tables of the law. The sum of the first table is what Jesus called the greatest commandment:

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Matthew 22:37.

And the sum of the second table Jesus said was just as important, to

“love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39.

Notice there’s a word that is common to both commandments. Love. Love is the summary of the whole law.

“Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Romans 13:10.

All the commandments are about our relationship with others. We can’t obey them by ourselves. We can’t do the will of God without being part of the people of God, the church. It’s all about how we love God and love others.

Anytime someone thinks they’re speaking for God but they don’t speak in love, they are most certainly NOT speaking for God.

I have this back door with French window panes. The whole idea is that if you break one of the little windows, the rest of them will be fine, right? Well, a rock hit the top window and all the glass shattered. Clearly, my door is not an authentic French door. But this is a good illustration of God’s law. You break one, you break them all. 

“You shall have no other gods.” You shall fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Get all your other gods out of God’s face.

So the first commandment is the most important. If we break it, we break all the rest. And when we break any of the other commandments, we’re also breaking the first. The fool says in his heart that there is no God, at least for a moment, while he sins.

Simple to understand. Not so simple to pull off.

This week we move on to the second 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.” Exodus 20:7.

A literal translation would be something like, “you shall not lift the name of the LORD your God to emptiness, or vanity.”

Here are some examples of how we do this all the time:

When someone is running a little late and traffic backs up and they say, to no one in particular, “Jesus Christ!” or “GD it.” Calling on God in anger to bring damnation on someone or something because they feel inconvenienced. Or when someone says “Jesus” or “Christ” or “God” in the place of the F-word or the S-word or whatever. Using the name of the Lord as if it’s a common thing, nothing special. Don’t use any name that refers to God to express anger or discomfort.

When someone wants to be believed and trusted so they say “I swear to God.” Jesus said “let your yes be yes and your no be no.” This is exactly what He was talking about.

But it’s not just about cursing and swearing.

It’s also when someone knows the pastor might drop by so they make sure their Bible is dusted off and sitting on the table by their favorite chair. Or when a politician tries to appeal to their religious base by faithlessly invoking God’s name or His Word.

It’s also about false teaching. When someone goes beyond the clear teaching of Scripture and goes into wild speculations, myths, and personal interpretations to make themselves look smart or to manipulate people. False teaching is one of the biggest ways God’s name is used in vain. We need to stick to the clear teaching of Scripture, to what God expects from us, what He’s clearly revealed to us in the Gospel and the promises of Jesus.

But we’re always finding ways to make it about us instead.

Like when someone tries to control God for their own selfish purposes by using the name of the Lord as if it was magic. Don’t use the name of the LORD like witchcraft.

Or when someone openly mocks God. 

It’s also about when worship and prayer become some kind of empty show—lifting up the LORD’s name to emptiness. Either mindlessly droning through dead liturgy, or drumming up emotion through worship music for a spiritual high or entertainment.

We do these things without even thinking about it.

If I was walking across the living room and tripped on a shoe that was left out, and I yelled “Kimberly Marie!” What would I mean by that? I’d be blaming Kim for tripping me, right? For leaving her shoe in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers.

So what do you think it means if I trip and say, “Jesus Christ!”

It’s like I’m scolding God. Blaming Him. Probably shouldn’t do that. We’re not supposed to be the kind of people who blame God for our troubles. We’re not supposed to curse the name of the LORD when bad things happen to us.

You probably know the story of Job. God loved Job but the devil said the only reason Job loved Him back is because of the good things God had given him. God told the devil he was wrong about that, that Job would still love Him even if all the blessings were taken away from him. He’d still be faithful. So God gave the devil permission to take everything away from Job except his life, to prove that Job didn’t only love God because he was being bribed.

I can’t read the story of Job without wondering the same thing about myself that the devil wondered about Job. Do I only love God because of the good things He’s given me?

So the devil attacks Job hard. Kills his kids, destroys his wealth, takes his health and leaves him festering with boils and misery. On top of all this, he leaves Job’s wife alive and healthy and angry and heartbroken to stand over him, bickering and nagging and accusing. At one point she just comes out and says exactly what the devil wants her to say. She looks at Job and says “Why don’t you just curse God and die!” I think this was a pretty important moment of truth. And Job said,

“you sound like a fool. “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job 2:9-10.

That had to be a bad day. It gets worse though, because the rest of the book is Job’s friends telling him how much of a loser he is. Job hangs in there pretty well, certainly better than I would. In the end, the devil is proved wrong and Job is restored.

God is God and we are not. The purpose of this life is not to fill it up with pleasures and comforts and treasures and have power and fame and glory for ourselves. The purpose of this life is to love God and love others. To worship God and love people. To learn how to trust God and live by faith in His promises no matter what happens.

Job got that.

Job is the oldest book in the Bible. Written long before Moses wrote Genesis. It would be wise for us to return to Job often and be reminded of his faithfulness and humility. You know, because of Jesus, we’re all like Job. Because of Jesus, we’re highly favored of God. This is what Jesus did for us: everything was taken away from Him, He suffered and He was murdered on a cross, and because He endured everything and was faithful to the end—he was restored. Only Jesus was so much greater than Job—He rose from the dead, defeated death, hell and the grave. He didn’t do it for Himself, He did it all for you and me. God looks on us with favor because of Jesus. Hold onto that promise, hold onto that hope. You’re going to need it, because the devil is never going to stop trying to destroy your faith either—just like Job. He’s not going to stop trying to get you to curse God and die. Not until Jesus comes back and gets rid of him once and for all. Hold on to the promises of Jesus.

If we don’t hold onto the hope we have in Jesus, life will start to look kinda hollow.

You shall not lift up the LORD’s name to emptiness. 

You shall not lift up the LORD’s name to vanity.

I can’t hear the word “vanity” without thinking of my favorite book in the Bible. My favorite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. I was talking with one of the men from our church the other day and asking how his “read the Bible in a year” plan was going. He said it was going fine but he was in Ecclesiastes and it was so depressing. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Everything is meaningless.”

I said, “Yeah, it’s so bleak. And I love it.”

I think everyone should read Ecclesiastes first before they read anything else in the Bible. It doesn’t offer any answers. It doesn’t offer any hope. It just says we’ll never find the meaning of life in wealth, or power, or pleasure, or wisdom—everything is empty and meaningless. It doesn’t go as far as Job’s wife, it doesn’t say to “curse God and die,” but it does say the best you can hope for is to eat, drink and be merry with some good friends before the face of the LORD. That’s all there is. Then you die. Bleak.

Which is the perfect starting point for understanding what the rest of the Bible has to say. Ecclesiastes asks the questions that the rest of the Bible answers. It shows us that God understands what it's like to be a human being on this strange planet. All the philosophers who think they came up with something clever, the German existentialists, the nihilists, the moderns and the post-moderns—there isn’t anything new under the sun. Ecclesiastes said all those things over three thousand years ago. Then the rest of the Bible introduces us to the LORD God. The one who saves us from all that meaninglessness and hopelessness. The Bible introduces us to Jesus. He’s the answer to all those questions. 

Jesus is the answer. 

Remember, the first thing said in the Ten Commandments isn’t a commandment at all, it’s a blessing. A reminder of who God is and what He’s done for us. “I Am the LORD your God who saved You from slavery.” This is how we’re supposed to lift up the name of the LORD. I Am (which is a reference to the name God called Himself when He spoke to Moses from the burning bush) the LORD (which is another reference to the name God told Moses to call Him.) But it doesn’t really say “LORD,” in the Hebrew it actually says YAHWEH. 

LORD = YAHWEH Anytime you see LORD in all caps in the Bible it’s actually the personal, covenantal name of God for His people. YAHWEH. The reason it doesn’t say YAHWEH in your Bible, and is replaced with LORD in all caps, is a strange story. Jewish people got really superstitious about the name of God after the exile to Babylon and thought it was a bad idea to say the name of God, or even write it, so they replaced it in the Bible with a made up word—the letters YHWH combined with the vowels from Adonai. [YaHoWaH] They thought this would help them avoid “using God’s name in vain.” This made up word was never meant to be spoken out loud but German translators didn’t know that so they pronounced it Yehovah. It’s where we get the word Jehovah. Then in English Bibles, wherever the word was found, we translated it as LORD with all caps—apparently because we’re a little superstitious too. But God never told His people not to say His name. He actually said the opposite, in Exodus 3:15 He said His people are to call Him YAHWEH,

"This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.”

He told them to call Him YAHWEH — thousands of times throughout the Bible. It’s amazing how we can’t get anything right, you know? 

No Other Gods So last week, we talked about the first actual commandment—how we’re not to have any other gods. That commandment is about the inclination of our hearts. The second commandment is the outward expression of the first, because Jesus said

“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Matthew 12:24.

The first commandment is internal and focused on our heart. The second commandment is external and focused on our mouth and our words.

When the second commandment says “you shall not lift up the name of the LORD your God in vain” in the Hebrew, it actually says, “you shall not lift up the name of YAHWEH to emptiness.” 

This is important to us as Christians. Because the basic confession of Christianity is what? Jesus is LORD. Jesus is YAHWEH. His is the name that is above every other name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.

I hope you’re seeing that the second commandment is a lot bigger than “don’t cuss” or “don’t use swear words.” I know most Christians don’t like it when people use profanity, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is talking about.

It’s about being careful with the name of God. It’s about keeping His name holy.

Now, this is a bit of a personal opinion and personal preference but I always told my kids to use those Ned Flanders replacement words. Gosh darn it, dang nabbit, geesh, friggin, gah. Uh muh guh! I know some people don’t like this kind of thing because they say, “you’re just replacing using God’s name in vain with words that sound similar.” As if that’s a bad thing. Good grief! That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To purposefully and intentionally NOT use the LORD’s name in vain. I think it’s a little victory of faithfulness every time I hear Angel say “Oh my gosh!” when he’s playing Minecraft. I think it shows that he’s trying to be faithful.

But the second commandment is really all about how we represent the name of the LORD. How we speak of God. It’s about love and grace.

If you’re at lunch today and someone spills their tea and then drops a G.D. bomb, you have a choice. Will you use the name of the LORD to shame them and condemn them? “Thou shalt not use the name of the LORD thy God in vain. Sinner.” Or will you lift up the name of the LORD in Christ with love and offer grace and peace?

We’re supposed to be the kind of people who fear and love God so much that we know His name should sound sweet on our lips. When we call on Him in times of trouble. When we pray and praise and give thanks.

When we’re in trouble, like Job, we are to be the kind of people who don’t blame God, but call on the name of the LORD. In Christ, He promises to deliver us, rescue us, and save us.

When we want something, when we need something, Jesus says to ask in His name and it will be given to you. He said to seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.

We are to lift up the name of the LORD, to bless His holy name, to give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever.

AMEN