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Most of us would never shrug off a slur against someone we love—yet we’ve grown comfortable around casual, empty uses of the name of the God we say we follow. The Third Commandment challenges us on that laxness.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor compares invoking God’s name without reverence to offering people “panda dogs” instead of real pandas. What does he mean by this analogy, and how does it apply to how Christians represent God in their daily lives?
The sermon opens with modern endorsements from figures like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk to illustrate how much weight people place in a name. How does this help frame why God cares so deeply about how His own name is used—and what does it reveal about our priorities when we treat His name more carelessly than a celebrity’s?
Jesus expands on the Third Commandment in Matthew 5 by discouraging oaths altogether. How does this teaching challenge common practices like swearing on a Bible in court or invoking God’s name to add weight to personal claims? What does Jesus suggest as the better alternative?
The pastor notes that many people will walk out of a movie over profanity but tolerate repeated irreverent references to God without a second thought. What does this reveal about where our priorities actually lie, and how should it challenge us?
The pastor describes Ed from the Tuesday night Bible study—a man who rarely spoke, but when he did, everyone stopped to listen. How does Ed’s example illustrate what it looks like to live with such integrity that your words carry weight without needing oaths, divine references, or extra emphasis?
How can believers ensure their lives reflect the true power behind God’s name rather than merely “putting on a costume”—especially when facing everyday temptations to compromise honesty or misrepresent who God is?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Amen. Well, let’s continue to hear from God’s Word now.
Well, I suppose you could say medical commercials are, in some sense, endorsements, right? We don’t know the people in them, but they look like the people we often want to be. Or they’re the cute animals we’d like to have as our pets. Or whatever the case might be, it’s meant to be, in a sense, an endorsement.
There’s lots of things that we spend our time thinking about concerning endorsements. There’s so much that’s happened this year. Do you remember the big controversy around the big—I’m not allowed to say the name—the big football championship that happens every February? And there was a big controversy. People wondered if maybe it was all rigged because then Taylor Swift would be able to make a big presidential endorsement on the field after the game. And people were convinced it was going to happen.
It didn’t. But people were thinking, “Oh, that’s a huge play, because if she puts her name behind a presidential candidate, it could sway the election.” Of course, later on, she did make an endorsement. It didn’t make that big a splash. But we spend a lot of time thinking about these things. Who’s endorsing whom?
And some people said after she did, “Well, maybe you should throw away her albums or burn them,” or whatever the case. And then on the other hand, then Elon Musk, he made an endorsement. And people are saying, “Well, if I own a Tesla, now I need to sell it or get rid of it.” Someone blew up his Tesla. I wish he would have just given it to me instead. I would have taken it off his hands for him. But I don’t want it because there’s an endorsement behind this.
And so we see people getting mad or happy over endorsements, get some sarcastic ones. President Putin of Russia made a sarcastic endorsement because he just likes to cause chaos. We spend a lot of time thinking about endorsements. Why? We care about what people think. And to an extent, even though there’s arguments on exactly how much genuine sway that holds, there’s the thought that if people like someone who makes an endorsement, that there’s a power in that name. And that power in that name might make a difference.
We assume that a name means something. And as we go to the Third Commandment, God is challenging us to understand that his name means something. Because for all that we spend time thinking about how other people’s names mean something, you know what? Even the most powerful in the world, whether it’s Swift or Musk or the President of the United States or whomever it might be, none of them have the power to actually fix the things that are broken in this world or to save a single soul. But God does.
And yet we spend a lot more time thinking about other people’s endorsements and the power of their names. God’s challenging us to think about the power of his name. And we don’t worry enough about his name.
Let’s pray tonight that he would help us to understand just how important his name is. And if we really had to reflect on that power and importance of it, that would be reassuring to us. Because that means, you know what? When he calls you and saves you, you actually have the endorsement of God behind you. That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Let’s pray to him right now.
Father, we do come before you as the one whose name is above all names and whose power is above all powers. You are the one who gives every life its breath. You are the one who gives and takes away. You are the one who creates and destroys. But you are the one who restores. So even as we see that someday you will bring judgment and tear down the walls of sin, we know that you give the ultimate restoration, the ultimate endorsement. And Lord, would you give us the peace and comfort that comes in trusting in what you do? We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let’s go ahead and turn to Exodus chapter 20, verse 7.
“You should 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.”
God is known by a name. Now, we talk a lot about God as God. And that’s perfectly fine. If you go back to the original languages of scripture, you’re not going to find the letters G-O-D, because that’s English. But you will find the equivalents in Hebrew and Greek that show up. It’s not bad to refer to God as God. But he also identifies himself as he makes covenant with people, as he makes promises to people by his name.
Moses says, “How can I know who you are and tell others? How can they know that they should listen to what I’m saying?” And God says, “I am who I am.” I am Yahweh.
God wants people to actually know. He’s not just an abstract thought. He’s not just vaguely the divine. He can be known by a name. He can be known and related to. And so he gives his name. And he gives his name as a way of giving his authority. Because Moses, by knowing his name, then can go to people and say, “I know of whom I’m speaking about.” And you can, too.
And I’m not just saying, out of a world of many, many gods, as the people of the time often thought there were, there’s some God somewhere that says you should do something. No, Moses could say, the God, the only one who can say I am who I am, because he’s the one who made everything. Nothing defines him other than himself.
That’s giving me his name. And so we can have confidence.
We talked a few weeks ago, as we were studying the life of Isaac, there’s two ways that God’s frequently identified. He identifies himself by his name, and also his relationship to his people. And those two go together. So he’s the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That’s his relationship. And he is Yahweh, or as it’s often translated in scripture in our English Bibles, or in most modern languages, Lord. You see the Lord in small caps, that’s God’s name.
Why isn’t it just written there, typically, in most translations? Because of a long line of tradition wanting to be careful in respecting the Lord’s name. So we don’t just flippantly even print it. We don’t flippantly say it, because God’s name means something. We don’t want to detract from it.
And so going back to even the pre-New Testament times, there was tradition, let’s just refer to him as we would a king. We’ll call him Lord out of respect. We won’t utter his name. Just like if you’re introduced to a very powerful, important person. Let’s say, in a few months, we’ll have an inauguration. You get invited to go to DC. And a Secret Service agent taps you on the shoulder. And after you get up off the ground from fainting, you’re told, the president wants to meet you. And so you’re ushered away. And you go back into the Capitol building and back behind all the fanfare and pomp and circumstance of the moment. You go back. And there’s someone sitting there. And you walk up to that person. You say, “Hey, Don,” or “Hey, Kamala, are you going to do that?” No. No. You’re going to say, “Hi, Mr. President.” Hello, Madam President. You wouldn’t address by name. Now, maybe the person would invite you to. But more than likely, they’ll just take it. That’s how we address presidents, right? How much more so with the Lord?
Now, God does tell his name. He doesn’t say that we can never say his name. But there’s something good in that tradition that reminds us, yes, it actually does matter. God’s name matters. We should show respect.
And so even if, as we read that, we change in our heads or we even utter out loud God’s name, it’s a great time to be reminded that there’s something to it and that we should be respectful about it. We don’t just toss it out.
Why does God care about this? Because now God identifies what he’s done in history from the creation of the world onward by attaching his name to it. So when people, and especially when people who say they believe in him, use his name flippantly, as if it doesn’t mean anything, as if there isn’t any power behind it, what does it say? It calls into question even his existence. Because we’re saying it doesn’t really matter. God wants us to say it matters, that there’s actually something to it.
God gives his name in the process of rescuing his people. He gives it to Moses as he’s drawing them out of slavery. And every subsequent generation that has followed him, whether they’ve been in literal slavery or not, has been rescued from the bondage of sin because of that God who rescues.
And if he’s rescued us, if he’s done all that for us, do we really want to act as if his name doesn’t matter? Would we do that for the great celebrities of our time, the great business people of our time, the great politicians of our time? I think the answer is no. So why do we do it with our God?
We talked about counterfeiting last week in relation to making images and idols and so on. And Jeff was kind enough. Incidentally, we have a major budget surplus next year. We were talking about the budget. I have a $1 million bill here. So you don’t even need to give next year, right? I mean, you don’t need to give because I have $1 million here. Boy, I mean, at our budget, we’re set for a long time to get some interest off of that. We’re just going good. Anyone want to take this to the bank for me?
Oh, hey, hey, yeah. Talk to the treasurer. He’ll take care of you and make sure that you take this securely to the bank, right? There’s only one problem. The wrong presidents are on here. It’s the vice president and our former president duking it out with boxing gloves on. I don’t think that’s going to get me anywhere, is it?
Now, truth be told, on the back, it does have what God does for us. And so there is something incredibly valuable on the back of this bill. But ignore what I said about that we’re set on the budget next year, because I can guarantee now. I think Leo and Levin should go ahead and take it to the bank, and I’ll watch from a safe distance and see how quickly the police officers swoop upon them. And then we’ll start prison ministry. It’ll be great. It’ll be great.
It’s not going to do any good, right? Because it’s not real. And I know it’s not real, and so I don’t treat it as real. I would not be waving a real million-dollar bill in front of you because I’d be afraid someone would hear, and before I got done with the sermon, would come bolting into the building with a gun and say, “Give me that million dollars,” and I’d be gone. No, this would already be locked in a vault. I’m not treating it with reverence because it doesn’t have any power behind it.
God’s name has the ultimate power behind it, so we treat it with reverence because it’s real. It’s backed by something far better than the gold standard or any other standard. It’s backed by God himself.
When we use his name but we use it without reverence, it’s sort of like if you know that someone needs medicine, and say it’s cold medicine or whatever. Maybe you have a child who’s sick, and you pull out the cold medicine, the liquid one, and you pour it, and you say, “Oh, I’ll just throw some other things in it. I don’t know, let’s put it in the pantry. I’ll just start dumping stuff.” You wouldn’t do that because you’re diluting what’s actually good. It might have something good in it, but it might have something that counteracts it, that actually reacts to it and causes damage. You wouldn’t do that.
And yet, we as Christians, we go around using God’s name but not using it with reverence, not using it necessarily with a life of reverence. People are seeing the prescription they need, the medicine they need, and it’s all mixed up with stuff that’s actually deadly. God’s calling us to do something better.
Can we speak God’s name? Yes. He told it to us. He wants us to identify who he is. His name’s beautiful. But he wants us to do it in such a way that we’re actually treating it as if it actually matters.
And there are a lot of ways that we directly don’t. Sometimes it’s just surprise, right? Someone shouts out a reference to God because they’re startled, or they want to make it clear they’re startled. Sometimes that’s very reflexive. Sometimes it’s intentional. What’s clear, though, is God isn’t being addressed in that moment. And so whether you’re actually using literally his name or a reference to him, that’s not respecting his name. You shouldn’t do it.
If you have, he offers forgiveness from everything we do. Think of mammoths. They’re a list of things that we fall into as human beings that God offers forgiveness from. So it’s not, “Oh, now you should be cast out.” Someone startled you one day, and you made an exclamation invoking a deity. And so therefore, now you can never come into church. No, it’s not that. But we should aspire not to do that.
Sometimes it’s even in a way that seems more harmless. We don’t know what to say in a prayer, so we just start using various references to God. And we realize, and comedians have played this up at times, but it’s a pointed thing how it can sound really ridiculous if we were talking to anyone else.
And we realize, OK, so maybe I’m not—OK, so maybe when I’m praying to God, I’m not saying, um, or like. I’m just saying, Lord a bunch, or God a bunch, or Father a bunch. That’s OK. I mean, don’t feel like you have to keep a close tally. Ooh, am I referencing God too many times in the prayer? But it does encourage us to think God’s name and references to him are more than verbal filler.
We should be careful. We should be intentional. And if it would seem awkward referring to anyone else, it would seem like, “Well, why are you using my name just to fill the space we don’t know what to say?” Then maybe we should think about it.
Again, I’m not trying to give a hard and fast rule on exactly how you do that in prayer. And for that matter, there are prayers, the Eastern Orthodox especially love these prayers, where they often just will say, for example, the Kyrie. You see that in high church traditions around the world. But just, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy,” that sort of thing. Or there’s the Jesus prayer. There’s different prayers like that. And if you’re intentionally meditating on his name and saying it over and over, I’m not saying that’s taking his name in vain.
What I’m talking about is when we’re just being reflexive, we’re just being tired, and we’re just inserting his name because we don’t know what to say. And it’s not because I just want to say your name because I want to be close to you. It’s just because I need to fill the space. I have air time here with God. You know, I turned on the prayer, and I have to fill up. I still have 30 seconds before I feel like I’m holy enough praying. I need to fill it up.
And we want to be more intentional. Sometimes it gets even worse, which is that we invoke a reference to God because we’re doing something that’s false, that’s sinful, or we have no intention of fulfilling it, but we want people to believe it.
We want people to believe that we really did turn in the paperwork on time, and we didn’t, or the assignment. And so we invoke God’s name. And we think, “Well, it doesn’t really hurt, but it sure makes it sound more real,” right?
Well, for one, it’s so common in our society, I don’t think it really does. But even if it did, I’d say don’t do that. If someone lies and references you in the lie, you don’t like that. If someone goes and does something and says, “Don’t worry, my friend will take care of it,” and it’s really iffy whether the first person can fulfill that pledge or not, you don’t want them referencing you and saying you’ll take care of it.
You want someone to forge your name on a loan and be a cosigner? Wait a second. You know, there are lots of identity theft at the moment. You go into your credit report and say, “Wait a second, I don’t know what that is.” That’s interesting. And you realize, “Wait, I know the person that took this out, and I didn’t say anything about this. I wasn’t there.” You would not appreciate that.
God doesn’t want us to call down debts upon his name like that. And I think the only reason we do is that no matter how much we say, even what we find in this commandment, we don’t really take it seriously. We haven’t genuinely internalized that in our hearts that this matters.
Do we understand how much this matters—that we give authentic, pure truth to people in this world? We don’t like to be fooled. And God doesn’t like us to fool people with his name. And so he calls us to be respectful, whether it’s those more just knee-jerk uses or those more intentional ones. Be respectful, understand what we’re saying.
Everyone loves pandas, right? I think if I did a survey, it would be very different from our politicians. What’s your approval level of pandas? They would have sky-high approval ratings, right? I mean, I’ve never met someone who said, “I just hate pandas.” Oh, boy, they just burn me up. Pandas, right? Pandas—I mean, we all love pandas.
And the Chinese government controls access to the pandas of the world because they’re native there, and they don’t like handing them out. They don’t just allow zoos around the world to have them. They sign agreements and give term limits to loans and so on. So like, we’ll get a panda here at the St. Louis Zoo. They only have it for a certain amount of time. Apparently, even in China, they’re strict on giving zoos pandas.
And one of the zoos in China wanted to have a panda because that draws people into the zoo. People like to come and see the pandas, but they couldn’t get one. So they said, “Well, we know what we’ll do. We’ll just take a couple of chow-chow dogs and dye them.” Oh, that’s good enough, right?
Is that good enough? No, it’s not, right? I mean, OK, they’re cute in their own merit. But as pandas, no. There’s no panda power behind them. They’re dogs, right? If you want to go see dogs, great. But if you go to the zoo to see pandas, it isn’t cutting it because you want to see the actual real deal.
And it’s a bigger deal to see a panda. We can go lots of places and see dogs. And if you have a dog, whether or not your dog would approve of this and appreciate it, you could dye your dog to look like a panda, especially if it’s a longer-haired dog. But not everyone has a panda, so it matters.
And people were really outraged when they found out, and the zoo had to correct it and say, “Well, we have panda dogs,” is how they termed it. And they mentioned how people just love to come see the panda dogs. Well, you’re not going to draw a bunch of people to the zoo to come see panda dogs. They want to see pandas.
A lot of times when we are tossing God’s name around, we’re offering the world panda dogs, because we invoke God’s name. We attach his name to our lives, to our actions, to our words. And yet, we’re not actually attaching God and his will and his care to those same words. And so what happens then?
Well, people arrive, and they look, and they say, “I thought I was getting a panda. I thought I was actually, I was encountering the God of the universe.” And it’s clear that what you’re offering me is a dyed dog. Not what I reckoned for.
Here’s something that challenges me. And maybe it challenges you as well.
You haven’t seen a movie. Anyone here ever seen a movie? Most of us have seen a movie, right? All of us have seen movies. OK.
And assuming you didn’t travel on a time machine and come from the silent picture era, you’ve seen movies in which people speak. And if you’ve seen a movie in recent times, people speak a lot of things that we wouldn’t say here in the church building, right? I mean, a lot of things. It’s hard to find a movie where they don’t say a lot of things nowadays.
What things that they say offend you? Yeah.
And the reason I ask that is we think about the big FCC-prohibited curse words, the really ugly four-letter words and stuff. Those are probably the ones we’d list out. And I know a lot of people who will hear, “Oh, there’s a bunch of those in the movie. I’m not going to go see it.” But what if it’s just that people use God’s name in ways that aren’t reverent and aren’t referencing Him a bunch of times? Will you go see it?
And if you walk out of a movie that does both, which one is the one that’s stuck in your head and bothers you?
And I think what’s convicting on that is a lot of times, we tolerate plenty of references to God—inappropriate, in vain references to God. But boy, you drop on those other words, and I’m out of here. And it shows where our priorities are. They aren’t the same place that God’s heart is.
I’m not saying it’s good to use coarse language. I mean, don’t leave here tonight and go on social media and say, “Pastor Tim said it’s OK if I cuss as long as I don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.” That’s not what I’m saying. The Bible does call us to use good, fruitful, measured language. But if we want to know what God’s really concerned about most, it’s how we refer to Him and how we view His name and how we view references to Him.
And yes, the rest of that speaks to that. But there is the starting point in the heart. And if we care about how God’s name is referenced and references to God are used, I think the other stuff flows out of it a lot more. But there are an awful lot of times we care about all that other stuff, and we never actually get to caring about how people reference God.
What offends us? Now, we’ve been talking about the really intentional usage, inappropriate usage. What about more indirect misuse? Take a look at Matthew 5. Jesus is thinking about these things. He says that we shouldn’t invoke God’s name for an oath. And then He says we shouldn’t use heaven, and then in 35, or earth. He keeps going, right? The obvious ones of what we’ve just been talking about, He keeps going, “Or earth, for His footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.”
And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil.
Now, you might say, “But they took oaths in the Old Testament.” Leviticus. Good place to look. 19, verse 12, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.”
And Jesus probably had this passage in mind. Why does Jesus go so much more strictly on this than His very word does earlier? Did Jesus forget what was said in Leviticus? I don’t think I’d go that route.
No, Jesus knew exactly what was said in Leviticus. And initially, what it’s doing is addressing legitimate, necessary oaths. We see those in our society today, and Christians have wrestled with them. It’s called testifying in court. Can I go ahead and be sworn in? Is that OK? That’s the sort of thing it’s talking about, right? These really important things.
Sometimes you need to say, “I am putting myself at a higher level of truthfulness.” And Jesus says, “Well, here’s the problem with that.”
Do you think anyone’s ever sworn on a Bible going into court and then lied? Do you think if you were sworn in, you were going to give sworn testimony, and you were asked a question that you realized would bring about harm to yourself or your family, that you might be severely tempted to lie? Yeah, I think so. I think most of us would. You might not want to say that. You don’t want to say that, right? But you’re sitting there, and you realize that a loved one’s going to be put in danger if you give an honest answer. And you realize if you say, “I won’t answer,” that you might be brought up on contempt. So that’s not good. So you’re tempted to say, “Well, let me just fudge the truth a little.”
Do you think that we would? And Jesus is saying, how much more so in everyday life than we’re tempted to say, “I know you didn’t believe me that when I was in Scotland, I saw the Loch Ness monster.” I haven’t been to Scotland. And then you decide, “Well, I really did see something.” So I’m going to invoke God’s name so people realize I am really, genuinely, 100% serious.
And let’s say you really believed it. Let’s say Nessie really is real, and you did see Nessie. And you say, “Well, I really did see Nessie. All right, I need to make this stronger. I need people to understand. I saw Nessie. It was even better than that 1930s photograph. It really happened. I need to lock it up.”
What if your eyes deceived you? What if it was an optical illusion, something that wasn’t quite what you thought? And you’re invoking God’s name. Jesus is saying several things here. But a good starting point is, don’t grab onto things you don’t have authority over and use them to try to prove your point.
And that’s why he keeps expanding down. Everything that he lists there ultimately is under God’s control, including our very hairs on our head. And so when we try to say, “Well, by this or that, I’m going to swear to prove my point,” what are we doing? We’re saying, even though I’m really referring to God’s power indirectly, as it may be, even so, I’m going to do this because I’m so sure of this. But we don’t have the means to make good on the debt that we’ve just incurred if we’re wrong.
So Jesus says, “Well, just do something better. Take your lives and let them be ever faithful.” Think about “Take my life and let it be” and all the different areas it lists out. Just be faithful.
If we’re just faithful, if people know, “Wait, yes, they’re sinful. Yes, but they’re open about that. They admit that they’re not perfect. But boy, do they want to please Jesus. Boy, are these people who want to follow Jesus.” When we say something, people will just listen.
We all know that person or persons that we’re around that when they speak, we just stop because we know this isn’t going to just be verbal filler. It’s not going to just be shooting the breeze. This is going to be something big and important.
Our Tuesday night Bible study started years ago on Monday nights with a mostly different but not entirely different group of people. But Joyce, who was sharing our report earlier, her husband Ed, he didn’t say very much. And he was in it. And he’d just sit there most of the time. And it was in person, so we’d all be eating. He always had an egg sandwich or something.
He was just sitting there just eating quietly. And then we’d be talking about something in the Bible. And all of a sudden, he might not have said anything for an hour, hour and a half. Some nights he didn’t say anything. But he sat down that sandwich, and he’d speak. And he’d go, “Wait a second, I want to stop and listen.” Because you knew if Ed was going to speak, it was going to be something good and true and important. And he thought about it.
It wasn’t rash in any way. And you knew to stop. And that’s the picture of what we should be as Christians, that when we speak, we don’t need to add references to God or anything that God’s made in order for it to be seen as true.
Because when we live life in such a way that we carry the name of Jesus, we say we’re Christians, and yet people don’t know if what we say is true when we say it, really, our very lives become taking the Lord’s name in vain. If we say, “Well, I don’t have authority over those things. So what I have to do is simply live a life of such integrity that people know they can listen to me.”
Well, then you don’t need that other stuff anyway.
That’s where Jesus is leading us here, to understand that the only power is in him. So we choose to follow him. And we’re following him. People see that power. And that’s what speaks, versus when we choose to follow ourselves and yet try to somehow put that power on anyway.
Halloween was this past week. Anyone see anyone in a costume? I mean, I know that’s kind of a weird question to ask. But maybe just maybe a hunch on my part, Halloween week, maybe you saw some people in costume, right?
What kind of costumes did we see? A nurse? A nurse, OK. A princess? A princess and a nurse. Scary people? Ah, yes, scary people. A mermaid, did you say? Mermaid, yeah, OK. OK, that sounds fishy. Any others? Dinosaur, ooh, yeah. An alien stealing kids, wow. A dragon, ooh, boy.
Yeah, those are pretty impressive, aren’t they? OK, so let’s say I were an alien and I land on this planet. And I’ve never seen people do this before. And I see an alien stealing kids. I think, oh, I don’t know about that other, they don’t look like us, so there must be some other galactic empire that’s arrived here first. I shall go talk to them and ask to meet their leader. And I can meet both the humans and this other race of aliens at the same time. And the alien walks up and says, “OK, take me to your leader.”
What’s the person wearing the costume going to say? “Dude, it’s just a costume. Now how about you take off your costume?” No power there, right? You injure yourself and you see the nurse walking by, the person wearing the nurse’s uniform. You say, “Nurse, could you help me? I have an injury.”
Well, if it’s a costume, let me tell you, even if the person decides to continue to play out the role, you don’t want them to because it’s not going to go well for you, right? The power isn’t there. It’s a costume.
When we toss God’s name out, we’re essentially putting on a costume. We don’t want people to see costumes of God. We want people to see God. Because when you’re injured, you want to see a nurse. When you’re studying different creatures around the world, you don’t want to see an inflatable dinosaur. You want to see what kind of reptiles are actually alive, right?
The world wants to see where hope actually comes from. An awful lot of time, as we invoke God’s name and as we live in ways that aren’t properly demonstrating God’s name, you know what we do? We’re putting on the inflatable costume. And it’s impressive for a time. And people say, “Oh, isn’t that a neat dinosaur? Isn’t that a neat nurse? Isn’t that a neat alien abducting kids?” But then it’s completely unsatisfying.
And God doesn’t want us to do that. He wants us to represent Him. Because unlike us, God actually does everything He has ever said He will do, or He’s in the process of doing it right now. He will fulfill every promise that He hasn’t already fulfilled. So people need to see that.
God’s name reveals Him. It points to Him. It points to the relationship we can have with Him. So it’s not a costume. It’s not something to be thrown on when we need to give a costume of authority to our words. It’s not something to fill in the time and give a costume of content when we have nothing to say. It’s not something to prove our point when we’ve tattered our own reputation enough that people aren’t willing to believe us.
God’s name reveals Him, His power, His grace, His love. We’re called to testify to Him. So He calls us to set aside those costumes of His name, not misappropriate His identity, but to show it properly to the world. Let’s pray that we do that today.
Father, some of us may let things slip out of our lips that reference you inappropriately. And Lord, we ask for your forgiveness for that and guidance in that. But Lord, whether we say it explicitly or not, all of us misrepresent you in our lives as we go around and we say we follow you, and yet we don’t always live in accordance with you. And so we ask that you would help us to be brought closer to you, that we wouldn’t be the million-dollar bill that’s worthless and will only get us in trouble for forgery; that we wouldn’t be the inflatable dinosaur or the pretend nurse, but we might be real followers of Jesus who show what it looks like to follow you, and more importantly, show who you are.
Father, we ask that you would help us by the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Thank you, Chris.
There’s a lot of power in references. And as we look at this, as we take the Lord’s Supper each week, there’s power in his reference to what Christ has done for us. It’s real power. But when we take it and we don’t actually believe in him, it’s like taking the Lord’s name in vain. We’re saying, “I want this seal, but I don’t really want to do the thing behind it. I’m going to put on the dinosaur costume rather than go and do an archeological dig.”
It’s ultimately going to be meaningless. It’s not going to get you anywhere. So we always say, if you don’t yet believe in Jesus, please do let these elements pass you by. Not, though, because we don’t want to share them with you. We want to share him with you, though. And so if you don’t know him, I’d love to pray with you. If you’re online, our online church family would love to pray with you. Know the one behind this. And then it’s not an empty symbol. It’s the very promise of the God who can be known.
And then come back here next week and take it with us. Because he has given this to all his people, all who trust in him, that they might be strengthened, that they might be reminded of his faithfulness, his truth.
And so it was on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread and he broke it, and he gave it to him, and he said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And like man after supper, he took the cup, and he said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you under the remission of sin. Do this as often as you drink of it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim…
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