Thought For the Day: 01/10/08

Serving God and Loving Him
A Commitment to Obeying
Using God’s Name Wrongly
Exodus 20:7

I’m reminded of a friend of mine, who is an Independent Baptist Pastor, in Houston, who told me an incident that happened while he was going to school. He was going to college, during the day, and I believe he was a night supervisor for UPS. He can correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m sending these to him also. If I remember the story correctly, he said there was an employee who acted upset. He said every time that he consistently cursed and used the Lord’s name in vain. He told me that he got so fed up with the attitude and language of the man that every time is used God’s name in vain or cursed, that he would start praising the Lord by saying hallelujah, glory to God, etc. After a while this man asked him what he was doing. He answered him by saying, “Well, you are praising your god, so I thought I would praise my God.” The man shut up then. Amazing huh?
In our study of Exodus 20, we come upon the third Commandment, found in verses 7, that the Lord gave; “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” This Commandment is probably one that real Christians hold to very hard. My God’s name does not end with the “D” word. It’s unfortunate that as a child that man I respected in church turned out to be what my mother used to call, ‘potty mouths.’ One of these men was a big member of the church I went too, and was in a leadership role. I always stayed away from him simply because of his attitude. However, when I got older, I saw this man in a local barber shop and it seemed every sentence had curse words in it and lo and behold, he even used God’s name in vain. Should this shock me? It shouldn’t shock me, because using God’s name in vain and cursing is something that people train themselves to do. Most men and women who do this do not even realize that they do it. And, then again, some don’t care. I’m reminded of a Steven Curtis Chapman song entitled, “What About the Change?”
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away: behold, all things become new.” So why does the old man hang round so much? The problem as I see it is that too many people are hooked on their baptisms, and the idea of just praying the prayer. They think because they were baptized at a young age, they were raised in church, or that they said the prayer that one of these is enough. My Bible teaches that if the Holy Spirit isn’t dealing with them and that they then don’t truly repent of their sins, that they aren’t saved. Baptism doesn’t count for anything but obedience after salvation of the lost soul. If a person is really and truly saved, there is a definite change that doesn’t just last for a few days and goes away. It is seriously noticed by others. All of a sudden God becomes real to that person and they start depending on HIM.
I’m not saying that a child of God can’t fall back to their old habits, but there again God usually gets their attention fast. People who fall into this trap of what we call “backslidden,” get there because they choose not to train themselves to stay close to God. They don’t make efforts to be there. It would have been real easy for me to have stayed out of church when I left the first church I pastored. I could have used that as an excuse. Worse than that, I could have let my relationship with God go. It is a choice we make, and when we ask HIM to help us, HE will help us stay on track.
I do not know any person’s heart! Neither do you! Only God does. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us something that really “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The Lord answers that question with this; “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings,” Jeremiah 17:10. That answer gave me some insight to some of my issues. He gives us according to our ways and to the fruits of our doings. I guess that could be said in a different way, like, “You reap what you sow”. We reap the fruit of the sin we sow. On top of all this, we should understand that we can keep the evil thoughts and saying from coming out of our heart through our brain and out of our mouth. How do you keep the trash of our hearts pushed down where they can’t come out? By filling it full of God’s Word, praying, etc; basically the same spiritual nutrition as God expects us to do.
We need to understand that there are other ways of using God’s name in vain, and not by just the common one you might hear. A lot of times we use HIS Name in slang. The words gosh and golly are just two words that come to mind. Usually when these words are said, the person saying them catches themselves before the name, “God” comes out. The terrible thing about cursing is that once the habit is formed it is used as a tool for Satan. A 2 year old says a dirty word that mom or dad says and they laugh because it is cute to them. However, saying these words is not cute. The parents later hear the child of age 10 – 12 let out a few bad words and then they want to say something about it. It’s too late! Christian parents who may us foul language as by words need to realize that they are killing their testimony to their kids and may be driving their kids away from God, unknowingly. There are many things that we tell our kids not to do that we do ourselves. Bottom line is; we need to clean our lives up by being obedient to God’s Commandments. Take them seriously, because the Lord was serious when HE wrote them. Committing ourselves to the Lord, is committing one’s self to being obedient. Remember Ten Commandments are laws with purpose.