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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Taking the Lord's Name in Vain (Blogging the General Rules)


The First General Rule states:
It is therefore, expected of all who continue therein that they shall continue to evidence their desire of salvation, first, by doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced, such as The taking of the Name of God in vain

The first evil which is most generally practiced on Wesley’s list is The taking of the Name of God in vain. 

This happens to be #3 on God’s top 10 list of thou shalt nots (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5).  But it’s so common now (so generally practiced) that most of us don’t even flinch.   Christians do it, too.

When we exclaim, “Jesus!  Good Lawd! OMG, ”we use God’s name with grammatical irreverence.  When we use His name as an adverb for the degree of damn, as an interjection to express our emotion, or as an expletive or filler word to demonstrate our lack of vocabulary and imagination, it’s disrespectful and grammatically incorrect.

There’s also conversational vanity

“A son honors his father, And a servant his master. If then I am the Father, Where is My honor? And if I am a Master, Where is My reverence?” Says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise My name.
Yet you say, “In what way have we despised Your name?” (Malachi 1:6)

God is real and He hears our prayers (Psalm 65: 2).  When you yell, “Jesus Christ,” the actual living Jesus Christ hears you.  Being God transcendent and omnipresent, He can handle all of the prayers in the universe all at once; but ----- you ever have somebody call your name and after you stop what you’re doing and leave where you are to respond they say, “Oh.  Nothing”?    You know how irritating that is?  Now multiply that by 7 ½ billion.  

God is real.  If you’re going to call Him, have something to say.  Just basic conversational courtesy.

It’s common to take the name of God in vain grammatically conversationally and deceptively
The 9th Commandment is  “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor;” (Exodus 20:16) or, as we often paraphrase, “Thou shalt not LIE.”
Now check this out.

The Hebrew word translated vain or in vain in the 3rd Commandments (Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11) is the same word rendered false in the 9th Commandment.

To take the name of the Lord in vain is to lie ---- and put your lie on God.  It’s to be so vain that you speak for God what God hasn’t spoken.

When you declare and decree and prophesy that sowing a $200 seed in your service, or ordering the anointed bottle of holy water with the Dasani label scraped off, or liking and sharing that picture of stacks of $100 bills with a photo-shopped White Jesus in the background will force God to give them a blessing---- you are taking God’s name in vain.

And the Lord said to me, “The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart.” (Jeremiah 14:14)

How many times do you have to NOT receive what they declared and decreed before you stop replying, “I receive that, in Jesus name”?  

And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has NOT spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18: 21-22)

Make up motivational stories if you want to, but leave Jesus’ name out of it.

Grammatically
Conversationally
Deceptively
And (last one) relationally.

I am a child of God.  I am a follower of Jesus Christ.  I’m a servant of the Lord, indwelled by the Holy Spirit.  I wear the Lord’s name as a token of identity, purpose, and spiritual authority. 
But, I have these little quirks, these habits, these tendencies to do the evil that I don’t want to do.  I have a sin nature.  You do, too.  But, if I’m going to call myself by His name  then I can’t let what comes naturally define me.  I’m supposed to be a different.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. (2 Corinthians 5: 17)

So, I struggle.  I wage an internal war against my flesh.  And if I fall, I don’t use His name as an excuse.   No.  His name on my life compels me to  humble myself, and pray and seek His face, and turn from my wicked ways (2 Chronicles 7: 14)

We can’t just go, “Mmm.  Nobody’s perfect” It would be dishonoring the Name we bear.  We would be like the people Isaiah and Jesus confronted.

These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ” (Matthew 15: 1-3, 7-9, referencing Isaiah 29: 13)

We can’t do that.   I know everybody else does.  But we can’t.  Not if His name means as much as it should.

 ---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com  
Follow me on twitter  @AndersonTGraves  
#Awordtothewise

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