The Ten Commandments ~ You shall not murder

Of all the commandments God gives, my guess is that when we get to this one, we breathe a little easier because we feel like this one we can follow. The other 9 commandments are hard, we struggle to love God before everything else and to only use his name in honorable ways. We struggle to take time to rest and keep the Sabbath holy and maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but over the next few weeks we are going to be feeling the spiritual heat when we hear God’s commands to not lie or covet our neighbors’ possessions, but murder – this is an easy one. Most of us are never going to murder someone – most of us won’t even meet a murderer during our lifetime, so this one seems easy – but maybe we need to look at it a little deeper before we think we have it all covered.


Let’s start by making sure we understanding what this commandment really says because it is often misquoted. In many early translations of the Bible this verse was translated as Thou shall not kill – which led to questions about whether or not killing animals was ok, and then what about capital punishment and war? How could God forbid all killing but then call people to kill animals as part of the sacrificial system of Israel? Or how could God forbid all killing and then call the nation of Israel to head off into war – or give instructions about how to put to death those who have disobeyed the law. All these questions came about because of how early Bibles translated that word. There are eight different words in Hebrew that all refer to killing in and so God gave careful attention to the word he chose and the word was ratsach – which means the intentional taking of an innocent life. More than that, it means to plot and scheme in the taking of someone’s life.

So the word is not just to kill, we are not talking about the accidental taking of a life, we aren’t talking about punishment or the taking of life in the context of war, this is what we would call pre-meditated first degree murder and we know this is what God had in mind because in Exodus 21, as God expands on what these commandments are all about we hear him say (Exodus 21:14). So we first need to be clear that what God is talking about here is the willful taking of another life, we are talking about murder.

Again, most of us are probably still feeling pretty good when it comes to being obedient to this commandment and if we only had the Old Testament teaching, we might be ok, but we have to look at this commandment in light of Jesus teaching as well because Jesus talks about this particular commandment in his sermon on the mount. Look at Matthew 5:21-22. After hearing this, I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling so confident. When we expand out what God is saying here and look not just at our actions but to our attitudes and the thoughts that lie in our heart – my guess is that we all stand guilty before God because who among us has never been angry with someone or insulted someone? Suddenly I’m not so sure we have this commandment all covered and so like the rest of the 10 Commandments, we have to read it with humble hearts ready to confess our failures and ask God not only for forgiveness but for the strength to live a more faithful life.

So this commandment is not just about the act of murder, it includes the attitudes of our hearts and the thoughts of our mind, but I think it goes deeper than that. This commandment is not just a call to not murder others or to not be angry with others, this is a call to lift up and honor the sanctity of life which makes it radical and revolutionary for its time. Remember when the 10 Commandments were given: Israel had just spent generations as slaves in Egypt and when you live as slaves – life is cheap. Many times slaves aren’t even seen as being fully human so taking their life or treating them in inhuman ways was not seen as a big deal. This wasn’t just true for the Israelites living as slaves in Egypt; we see this wherever there is slavery. It wasn’t that long ago that we saw some of this in our own nation’s struggle with slavery. While some slave owners may have treated their slaves well, they were still considered property and many slave owners didn’t even see slaves as being human beings.

Unfortunately this attitude still remains in many parts of the world today. At last year’s Global Leadership Summit we heard from Christine Caine who helps care for those who have been victims of human trafficking, which is just another name for slavery. Christine told the story of young girls who had been taken from their homes and country and sold to be sex slaves in Europe. When their boat was being tracked by the authorities, their captors simply tossed the girls into the ocean, as if they were simply unwanted cargo. It’s hard for us to imagine that this sort of thing still takes place today, but it does and as long as it does we have to ask ourselves if we are doing all we can to honor and lift up the sanctity of life?

In many ways, this was the context in which Israel lived for generations. As slaves, life was hard and many times life didn’t hold a lot of value. If you remember the story of Moses, the reason his mother put him in a basket and floated him down the river when he was an infant was because the king of Egypt had said that all the Hebrew baby boys were to be killed. God’s people lived in an environment where there was not much value given to their lives, but as God leads his people out of slavery and into a new land he wants them to not only experience a free life, he wants them to learn that there is value in all of life and so this command to not murder is also a command to elevate life and honor all human beings and we need to hear it the same way today. Instead of ignoring this command because we have never plotted or planned to kill someone, we need to stop and ask ourselves if we are doing all we can to honor life. Maybe this means we get involved in issues like human trafficking, or maybe is just means that we begin to see the value and worth and dignity in the people around us with whom we disagree. Can we see value and worth in the people who are different than we are, and are we willing to respect and even love and work with those who might at times make us angry?

As we begin to expand our understanding of what God is calling for here, we not only see that this is challenging but we also begin see our failure in living it out, and while we have failed at times, all hope is not lost because the Bible is a testament to the power of God to forgive and change the hearts and lives of murders. I have to say that I have never really considered this before I read Win Green’s book on the 10 Commandments, but he makes the observation that most of the Bible is written by murders. It’s true! Most of the Bible has been written either by or about murders. Moses, who is believed to have written or at least helped compile the first 5 books of the Bible, was a murder. In his anger and frustration, Moses murdered an Israelite slave. David, who is the subject of 1st & 2nd Samuel and 1st Chronicles and the author of most of the Psalms was also a murderer. While he didn’t actually kill Uriah, he was the one who plotted to have him killed and David was one God held responsible for Uriah’s death. And then there is Paul whose letters to the church fill the New Testament, and Paul authorized the murder of Christians, and it is even recorded in the book of Acts that Paul was the one who held all the coats of the men who stoned Stephen to death.

So a good percentage of the Bible was written by murders. Three of the strongest leaders God has used in all of human history were murders and what this says is that if God can forgive and transform them – he can forgive and transform us as well. So no matter whom we are today, and no matter what our past may hold, God calls us to honor life not just by refraining from anger and envy which can lead to murder, but to honor life by seeing people in a fundamentally different way. Let us look at all those around us as brothers and sisters, children of God who hold within in them the life and breath of God, and let us work for their care and well being.

The Ten Commandments ~ Honor your Father and Mother

As we have been looking at the 10 Commandments we have seen how they act as boundaries that God gives us in order to protect the bonds of relationship. The first 3 commandments were given to protect our relationship with God and as we follow those commandments we find that our relationship with God, our faith and trust in God, grows. The fourth commandment, which calls us to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, was given to help protect our own health and well being and in many ways this is the only commandment given solely for our benefit and if we will take time to rest we find that our lives will be improved in all kinds of ways. Now the last 6 commandments are all boundaries that God gives to help protect and strengthen our relationship with others. Whether it is our family, friends or neighbors – God created us to live in community with one another and each of these commandments teaches us how to do this and as we follow them we will experience the blessing of stronger families, stronger marriages and a stronger community and world, and it all starts with Exodus 20:12 - Honor your father and your mother.


It is not by chance that God begins teaching us about strong relationship by having us look at the relationship with our parents because it is that relationship which is the foundation of all others. In many ways we learn how to interact with others from our parents and through our families. If you think about it, families are the first school, the first hospital, the first government, and the first church we all experience and so the family is the foundation of all other social organizations and all of our other relationships so if we are going to have strong relationships outside our family we need to work on healthy relationships at home and it all starts by honoring our father and mother.

Now take notice of the word that God chooses here. God doesn’t say love your father and mother, which is what we might have assumed God would have said since God is all about love, and God doesn’t say obey your parents, at least he doesn’t say it here, he says it elsewhere in the Bible, but here, at the very beginning, God says honor your father and mother and the word honor literally means to give weight to, or to take seriously. Honor means to value and respect, it means that we need to take seriously who are parents are and what they say. While we live in a culture where parents are often made the object of blame or ridicule, we need to take the principle of honoring them seriously because God takes this principle seriously, look at Dtr. 21:18-21.

What we see here is that there are serious consequences when we don’t honor our parents. Now let’s be clear that this passage in Deuteronomy is not calling for us to put a child to death for being rebellious. When it says here that the child is a drunkard and glutton, we are assuming that the child is an adult who has made choices to not listen to the wisdom of his parents or follow their example, so we aren’t talking about a child here but we aren’t talking about this kind of consequence for rebellious children of any age. What we need to take from this passage is the understanding that God takes seriously the command to honor our parents and so should we. It shows us that there are consequences in our lives and in all of our relationships when we don’t pay attention to this primary relationship with our parents.

Another interesting passage that shows us how important healthy relationships are with our parents and how foundation they are to all of life is found in 2 Timothy 3:1-2. Here God says that rebelling against parents is a sign of the end times, it’s a sign that the order God wants for the world is gone and when that is gone – the rest of the order God wants for the world will also begin to crumble and the reason is because it is our relationship with our parents that is the foundation of all other relationships and when that is gone – the rest of society is not far behind. What bothers me is that the entertainment culture of today often makes out parents to look like fools which opens the door for children and teens to disrespect their parents instead of honoring them, and while the world may tell us it is ok to turn away from our parents and not take them seriously, God says something completely different, and for life to be healthy and families and communities to be strong, we need to listen to God.

So we need to honor our parents and this means different things in different situations and at different stages of life. When we are young children, honoring our parents means listening to them and doing what they say. We learn how to honor all authority by learning how to submit to the authority of our parents when we are young. As we become teenagers giving weight to our parents means giving them respect even when we think they do absolutely everything wrong. Let’s be honest, when we are teenagers we often think that our parents don’t know anything and so adolescence can be a difficult time to live out this commandment. It’s true that as teenagers it is important to learn how to become our own person and learn to make our own decisions and deal with our own consequences in life, but we can’t do this at the expense of our parents. As a teenager, honoring our parents means respecting them and appreciating them for who they are and how God provides for us through them and it means taking seriously what we still have to learn from them.

As an adult, honoring our parents might mean continuing to take the time to maintain a relationship with them. As we begin to live our own lives and have our own family, it can become easy to pull away from our parents and maybe even ignore them, but there is no honor in that. Honor here can mean making sure lines of communication remain open and relationships remain strong. It’s making sure we take time to spend with our parents and allowing healthy relationships to develop between children and their grandparents. I was talking with a grandmother this week who felt so blessed to have a granddaughter in her life that was more like a daughter to her and through their relationship I could see the blessing that comes when we honor our parents and one of the most influential persons in my life was my Grandmother and one of the reasons my relationship with her was so strong was because she and my mother had a strong relationship and even more importantly she and my father – her son-in-law, had a good relationship.

Honoring our parents needs to continue throughout life and when this commandment really becomes important is when our parents become older and have greater needs. We need to remember that these 10 Commandments were given in a day and age when there was no social security or Medicare; there were no IRA or pensions to provide for people in their golden years. As people got older they were completely dependant upon their children for physical care and support and so this commandment has as much to say to grown children who need to honor and care for their aging parents as it does to young children who need to listen and follow what their parent’s direction.

While our society is clearly different today than ancient Israel, the truth is that as we age – we still need our children and our families - maybe more than ever. Too many people today are growing old alone. Too many people are facing tremendous needs without anyone there to help them through the difficult times. It’s not that there aren’t children, they just aren’t physically close by. As families spread out all over the state, country and world, we have to be more intentional in making sure we are honoring our parents and care for their needs.

While Jesus never said much about how young children were supposed to treat their parents, he did say something about how adults are supposed to care for their parents as they got older. Look at Mark 7:9-13. There were people who neglected to care for their parents and the excuse they gave was that the money they would have used to take of them they would give to the church as an offering and Jesus is clear that this practice is wrong. Giving to the church isn’t wrong, it’s neglecting our parents which is wrong. Honoring our parents doesn’t end when we become thirteen, or get married or have children of our own – honoring our parents needs to continue for a lifetime.

So this commandment might say different things to us at different stages of life, but it all comes down to giving weight to our parents. It comes down to respecting them and valuing them for who they are because if nothing else - they are the ones who gave us life. But how do we honor parents who have not been worthy of our respect? We have recently seen in the Casey Anthony story how not all parents are worthy of honor and so we have to ask ourselves what this commandment means in similar situations. The first thing to remember is that this is not anything new. There have been bad parents from the very beginning, in fact the Bible is full of stories about parents who did not always treat their children well, or set a good example, and yet it was right into all of that dysfunction that God gave this command and it wasn’t given with stipulations like honor parents that are worthy of honor – it says honor your father and mother – period. So we have take this call seriously and prayerfully think about what it means to honor parents that might not be worthy of honor and respect.

If you have come from a family where abuse or neglect from a parent was all you experienced, the first step in honoring them might simply be to accept that this was the situation and allow God to begin to heal and redeem. In Romans 8:28 it says God works for the good in all things and so we know that God works in bad situations and I believe how God works in these bad situations to bring about redemption and healing. Nothing can change history, nothing can change the past, but God can bring healing today and into the future, so if you struggle to honor a father or mother because of their actions and behavior –acknowledge that to God and ask God to work in you to find his grace and freedom.

The second step might be to come to a place where forgiveness can be offered. When we are able to forgive our parents we begin to find freedom to live in God’s grace and power and become more fully the people God wants us to be. In some cases forgiveness can lead to restored relationship which can bring more fullness of life, but unfortunately redeemed relationships are not always possible and in some cases the best thing might be to simply part ways and in those situations honoring our parents might simply mean praying for them from a distance and thanking God for the life that they gave you. Since God never abandons his children, neither should we abandon totally our parents and we don’t abandon them when we place them in the hands of God and ask God to bless them.
When parents are good and kind and faithful and loving – this command is easy – when they are not, it’s hard, but just because things are hard doesn’t mean we can ignore God’s word. The same is true with all of God’s teaching. It’s easy to love those we like and hard to love our enemy, but the call of God is to love our enemy. It’s easy to be generous when we have a lot to give, but the call is to give faithfully and even sacrificially at all times, even when we think we have nothing to give at all. We can’t ignore this command to honor our parents just because our parents frustrate us or infuriate us – we simply have to work harder in asking God to teach us and show us what it means to honor them.

While this command is really a call to honor our parents, let’s not forget that God has also given pretty clear instructions to parents as well. Look at Ephesians 6:1-4. It’s here where God says that children are to obey their parents, but it goes on to say that parents are not to exasperate their children but bring them in the training and instruction of the Lord. Parents are called to love and care for their children, they are called to teach them about God and I say we do that best by showing them the grace and love of God in our own lives. Parents need to live lives worthy of honor so that children can find it easy to honor them.

When I look around today and listen to people talk about families, I am concerned that we really do struggle with having strong and healthy relationships within our families. I hope that you will pray with me for families and for stronger and healthier relationships between children of all ages and their parents – it is this relationship we need to get right so that we can live long and faithfully in the world God has given us.

The Ten Commandments ~ Remember the Sabbath

One of the ways we have been looking at the 10 Commandments is as a series of boundaries that help protect the bonds of relationship. The first 3 commandments were all given to help protect and strengthen our relationship with God, and the last 6 commandments will all help protect the bonds of relationship we have with our family and others in our community, but this 4th commandment is unique because it doesn’t really protect or strengthen a bond of relationship with someone else, it is given by God to protect and strength us. God commands us to remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy because it is only when we take time to rest that we will experience true health and happiness in life. So this is the only commandment that is given to us just for us and for our own well being and yet sometimes I fear it is the one command we take the least seriously.

Before we can remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, we need to first understand what Sabbath means. The word Sabbath means to cease or to stop. Specifically it means to stop working and the whole idea of taking time off from work goes back to the story of creation. For six days, God worked. God created the light and the dark, the heavens and the earth. God created the stars and the sky, the sea and the land, the vegetation and the animals and then finally God created man and woman. For six days God worked, God created, and then on the seventh day God stopped working, God rested and God made that day special and holy and an important part of the created order. Think about it, God created a day just for rest. When we look at the story of creation we see that God created the world to have a certain rhythm. There is time for work and rest, labor and leisure, effort and ease. God created the world to have this kind of balance and since we are created as part of this world order, our lives need this same balance and rhythm. We need times of labor and leisure, effort and ease, work and rest and the only way we will achieve this balance is if we take the time to stop working –or remember and keep the Sabbath.

So the call of God to commit ourselves to a day of rest didn’t start with the 10 Commandments, but God reinforces the idea in the 10 Commandments for a very specific reason. Remember where Israel is at this moment, they have just left Egypt where for generations they had been slaves and slaves don’t get days off, slaves don’t get vacation time. So there was no Sabbath rest in slavery – the people worked all the time, every day – but now they are free and on their way to becoming the people God wants them to be and what God wants for them is health and strength so he gives back to them this day of rest, and what’s interesting is that God didn’t wait for the 10 Commandments to give this gift to his people, it came as soon as they left Egypt.

Turn to Exodus 16, the people of Israel have just left Egypt and escaped through the Red Sea. They are beginning to make their journey through the wilderness into the Promised Land, but things are difficult. They are hungry and thirsty and struggling to find food and water, so they cry out to God for help. First God provides them with water to drink, and then in Exodus 16 God provides them with food or manna which was bread from heaven. The manna would cover the ground every morning and the people would go out and gather up what they needed for each day, but then look at Exodus 16:4-5. There’s a reason God provides his people with twice as much manna on the 6th day, it was because God was not going to work on the 7th day, and God didn’t want his people working on that day either. After being slaves in Egypt for generations, God wanted his people to have time to rest and experience the balance and rhythm that were part of the world that God created.

Think about what this must have been like for the Israelites. All they had ever known and experienced was work, what a gift it would have been to have a day of rest. Here was a day when the people didn’t even have to go out and gather food – it was a true day of rest for everyone, servants and children and even the animals, no one had to work on the 7th day, so God gave this gift of the Sabbath to his people before he gives the 10 Commandments.

So the life God wants for us is a balanced life where there is work and rest and we need to not only remember this, we need to live it out, but the truth is that many of us don’t live this way, and we suffer because of it. When I first started out as a pastor I struggled with taking a day off – after all, how do you take a day off when you work for God? But what I forgot was that God was the one who was saying, take a day off – remember the Sabbath. For a couple of years I didn’t take a consistent day off and it wasn’t long before I was completely burned out. It took some strong words from friends of mine and the leaders in my congregation to help me see that I wasn’t following the plan God has given us and I was suffering because of it. If we don’t take time for rest we become stressed out and studies show that the stress which comes from overwork causes all kinds of physical and emotional problems. Heart disease, digestive disorders, joint pain, skin disease and high blood pressure can all be caused by not taking the time we need to rest. Depression and anxiety can also be caused by working too much and resting too little. In fact, many of the problems we experience or see around us have developed because we have allowed our lives and our schedules to get out of balance.

In his book on the 10 Commandments, Win Green says that God created the world so that we would
work at work, play at play and worship at worship.
When our lives reflect this balance – things are good, but too often what we see today is that people
worship work, work at play and play at worship.
Does your life look like this?

When we worship work we are dedicating everything we have and all that we are to our jobs or career. We worship work when we not only focus on work for 8+ hours a day, but then keep working at home in the evenings and even on weekends, holidays and vacations. Now let’s be clear, we do need to work and work hard. God gave us six days to work and only one to rest, so work, whether it is at a paying job or volunteering in the church and community, or working with and for our family, work is to be a pretty big part of our lives, but it can not be the center of it all. Work can not consume us. We cannot devote ourselves completely to what we do and forget about who God calls us to be.

We also can’t work at play. Have you ever taken a vacation where when you got home you were exhausted? Or taken a long weekend to spend time with the family and friends but worked in and around the house so much that you returned to work without feeling rested? If that sounds at all familiar, then you are working too hard at play. Play should be just that – play. It should be fun and restful. Play shouldn’t cause stress and anxiety. We shouldn’t need a vacation after our vacation. So let me give you some homework for the next two days. It is a holiday weekend, take some time to play. Don’t fill every moment of the weekend with yard work, house work or travel and activities that will drain you by the time you return to work, do something simple and fun that just brings you joy.

Life also get’s out of balance when we play at worship. We play at worship when we simply go through the motions of singing, praying and listening without allowing the spirit of God to speak to and shape our hearts and lives. Worship is the one place where God calls us to give ourselves fully and completely and when we do – what we find is that it doesn’t drain us like it does when we give ourselves completely to work. When we devote ourselves fully to God – God fills us to overflowing. When we give our lives fully to God – God fills us fully with life.

So as long as we worship work, work at play and play at worship, we will never experience the fullness God has for us because this is not the way God ordered life. In fact, as long as we reflect these out of balanced priorities, we will experience ongoing fatigue, stress, depression and even physical sickness. Life was meant to be lived a certain way and we need to get things back into a proper balance if we want to experience the fullness of life God has for us.

So how can we remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy? It can’t mean we simply do nothing, because that just isn’t possible, so what should we be doing to honor and remember this holy day? The first thing we need to make sure is that we actually do take time to stop working, or stop doing the work we do for 6 other days. We need that physical and mental break from our routine so part of honoring the Sabbath means that we resting from our normal work, but it means so much more and we can see that by looking at what Jesus did on the Sabbath, look at Luke 4:16. It was Jesus’ custom to attend worship on the Sabbath. Wherever Jesus was – he took the time to worship on the Sabbath, so worship needs to be an ongoing part of our lives. We need this time to reconnect with God and hear God’s word and feel the power of God’s spirit working in us just like Jesus.

Jesus also spent his Sabbath eating with family and friends, look at Luke 14:1. Eating together and sharing a meal with family and friends is an important part of living a balanced and healthy in life. There is something spiritual and life giving about eating together and it would be good for us to take this seriously. Is a family meal a daily or weekly part of your life? A time magazine article says that, “Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely children are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.” Maybe eating together can be a picnic today or tomorrow, but then can we keep that experience going and sit down to a family meal later in the week and then each week from here on out. Jesus shows us that there is something life giving when we eat together, so we need to take this seriously and make it part of our Sabbath.
While time in worship and with family and friends was the custom for Jesus on the Sabbath, let’s also be clear that Jesus broke the rules of his day and worked on the Sabbath as well, in fact let’s just keep reading in Luke 14:2-6.

Jesus got into all kinds of trouble because he did what many people considered to be work on the Sabbath, but Jesus was clear that the work he did was to bring life to people and a rich and full life was what the Sabbath was all about. Since the Sabbath was a gift given to bring people life, healing and helping and teaching those around him was an ongoing part of Jesus Sabbath day routine and it needs to be part of ours as well. While the Sabbath is a day we need to focus on taking care of ourselves, we can’t allow our self-care to become selfish. If we have the opportunity to help those around us – we need to reach out and do it.

So remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy means we stop working and allow our bodies and minds the time they need to rest. It means we take the time to worship and allow God to shape our hearts and souls which bring us life, and it means we spend time with others in ways that feed us physically and spiritually. All of these things can be part of a Sabbath rest, but there are so many more things that can help us experience the rest God wants for us.

If you work at a desk all day then to cease that kind of work might mean going out and doing something physical. Yard work can be part of a Sabbath rest if you love getting your hands dirty. For some people a Sabbath rest might include a hike or bike ride, for others it will be reading a book or doing the crossword puzzle. And the day you do things doesn’t really matter either. For some people the Sabbath might come on a Monday because we work on Sunday, or it might come on a Friday or Tuesday – the day doesn’t matter, what matters is that we take regular time to stop working and give our bodies, minds, souls and spirits time to rest and reconnect with God.

It’s amazing to think that God loves us so much that he gives us a commandment that really is just for ourselves, the key is for us to follow it. We need to rest because it is only through the Sabbath that we will experience all the fullness and joy there is life. God took a day to just rest and enjoyed the world he created and we need to do the same.

The Ten Commandments ~ Do not misuse God's name

Names are significant. Names are full of meaning and power, for example when we hear the name Mother Teresa - one image comes to mind, but when we hear the name Adolf Hitler a very different image comes to mind and we know these names have power because you don’t hear many people calling their children Adolf anymore. People will even change their names because of the power and the image that comes with them, for example, do you know who Marian Morrison is? I’ll give you a hint, Marian here is a man’s name and his full name is Marian Michael Morrison and he believed that you just couldn’t be a good cowboy with the name Marian so he changed his name to John Wayne.


Names have power and in the Old Testament, names represented the very essence of a person which is why God changed the name of Abram to Abraham. Abram means exalted father, but still just a father and Abraham means father of many nations. God changed Abrams name because his life was going to change, he wasn’t just going to be a father, the promise God made was that he was going to be the father of many nations, so God changed his name as a sign that it was going to happen. In the world of the OT, names had great significance and power which is one of the reasons why God includes in the top 3 of his 10 Commandment to not take his name in vain.

So what is God’s name? There are hundred’s of names given to God in the Bible and here is a list of more than 150 of them from Abba, to Jehovah Jireh, to Lamb of God, Messiah, Teacher and Word of God. While there are many names given to God, there is only one name that God gave himself and that is the name I AM. God gave that name to Moses at the burning bush when God called Moses to return to Egypt and lead his people out of slavery. Moses was reluctant to go because he was afraid that no one would listen to him or follow him so he asks God (Exodus 3:13-15).

So God gives himself the name – I AM, but since there is no past or future tense in Hebrew, what this name really means is I WAS, I AM and I WILL ALWAYS BE. In other words, the name God gave himself was I AM THE ONE WHO EXISTS FOREVER. God is the only eternal one and this means he is the only one with all the life and with all the power. Because names express the very essence and power of a person, God wants his name honored and used wisely so that his true character can be seen by all the people and one of the things we see throughout the OT is that God is serious about this command. Lev. 24:10-16.

While this seems harsh to us, it does reflect just how serious God is about his name. God wants his name to mean something positive and life giving, he wants his name to accurately reflect is life and truth and power and love to the world and so we need take seriously our use of God’s name. When we use the name of God we need to make sure we use it ways that honor God are not in vain. Now while we tend to think that this commandment means we shouldn’t turn God’s name into profanity and damn people or situations in the name of God (and we shouldn’t and we will look at that in a moment), the word vanity actually means useless or worthless, so not taking God’s name in vain means not using God’s name in useless, careless or worthless ways.

Now for Israel, this meant not using God’s name as part of a covenant or promise that the people were not going to fulfill. If the people made an oath in the name of God and didn’t fulfill that promise – they were taking God’s name in vain. They made God’s name meaningless and useless, so taking God’s name in vain has less to do with profanity and more to do with using God’s name in meaningless expressions, like saying “oh my God” when we are surprised by something. In his book on the 10 Commandments, Win Green says, Of course most people would say,… when I say that I really don’t mean anything by it and that is just he point! We reduce God’s holy name to nothing. A name which the ancient saints trembled to speak we now employ carelessly. When we make God’s name an everyday empty expression – what does that say about our understanding of God? What does that say about our relationship with God? You see, again this command, like all of them, is to help protect the bonds of relationship and when we turn God’s name into an empty expression of surprise – it diminishes our relationship with the God who was and is and always will be.

So we can’t be careless with God’s name, butwe can’t be disrespectful either. Using God’s name in conjunction with profanity is not only disrespectful – it misrepresents God. For example, God does not damn people, situations or the world, in fact in John 3:17 it says that Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn the world – to damn the world – but to save the world. We also hear this in 2 Peter 3:9. God doesn’t damn people; God’s job is not to curse people – his passion and desire is to see them return to Him and while there are examples of God’s justice and punishment at work throughout the Bible, the real story of the Bible is the story of God working to rescue, save and love his children. The real story of the Bible is the story of God wanting a relationship with us and making that possible through the power of his name – look at Romans 10:13. Sp the power of God’s name is to save and bring life, not condemn so when we use God’s name as profanity we misrepresent God to the world, and again we might say we don’t really mean that – but then we go back to the first point – if we don’t really mean what we say then we have reduced God’s name and character and our relationship with him to nothing.

Now what all of this means is that we need to take seriously what we say and if it is our habit to misuse God’s name, in either meaningless expressions of surprise or with profanity, we need to clean our language. Maybe James says this best when he says… James 3:9-12. If this is an area you struggle with, ask someone close to you for help. Many times we don’t even know we are using God’s name in vain, but if we ask for help and people start pointing it out to us kindly and with grace – my guess is that we will begin to become more aware of it and find new expressions of surprise and frustration.

It is also important to clean up our language because what we say is not only what our children will say but it will shape their understanding of God and in time their relationship with God. If God’s name is used in meaningless ways then in time God simply becomes meaningless. So we need to watch what we say and remember that our words have all kinds of consequences.

But this commandment isn’t just about what we shouldn’t say, it’s also about what we can say because the commandment doesn’t say we can’t use God’s name at all, which means that God’s name can be used by his children in ways that are appropriate and Jesus tells us that we need to keep God’s name holy, which means set apart as something powerful and special. What this means is that we can call upon God’s name for assurance, forgiveness, help, strength, power, healing and life. God’s name can be used in prayer and praise and worship. It can be preached and shared and celebrated and Jesus even said that in his name we can move mountains. It is because God’s name is so powerful and good that we need to make sure that we don’t misuse God’s name or misrepresent God to the world around us.

Since we can use God’s name, I believe that one of the ways to help us overcome our misuse of God’s name is by using it more and more in right ways. The more we use God’s name in praise and prayer, the less likely we will be to use it in vain. The more we call on God’s name in faith and trust, the less we will use in disrespectful or inappropriate ways. So here’s an exercise for us all this week. Find 10 ways to use God’s name in faithful and powerful ways every day. Ask God to bless people – not in the meaningless way many politicians ask God to bless the USA, but in genuine and specific words of blessing and praise. It doesn’t have to be said out loud to the person, but in our hearts and minds we can specifically ask Go to bless those around us. We can thank God for what we have and what we see. Verbally we ask a blessing for each meal so we actually hear our mouths praise and thank God for the food we have. If we will pray more and call on God’s name more and claim God’s promises more, in time our misuse of God’s name will disappear.

Now I do want to end on a note of encouragement, if you have never really thought seriously about how you have used God’s name in the past and you realize that using God’s name in vain has been a habit in your life, don’t feel like all is lost. While you may have struggled to honor God’s name, God has never failed to honor your name and offer you forgiveness and grace. We need to remember that some of the names given to God have been:

Jehovah – Shalom : which means God is our peace
Comforter
Deliverer
Friend of sinners
Lamb of God
Merciful God
Redeemer
Savior

So if our past doesn’t look very good in light of this command, we don’t need to give up hope, we need to call upon the name of Lord for forgiveness, and for the strength to live a new life which includes honest and faithful speech.