Thanks to Marilyn for sending in this topical article.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”

In His model prayer, in Matthew 6:5, Jesus taught us to open our prayers with:  “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name” – holy be Your name, separated be Your name.  God’s name is holy; God is IN His name; His nature is in His name.  In Exodus 3:13, when God speaks to Moses, telling him to go to Israel and tell them that He is setting them free, Moses asks, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’  what shall I say to them?”, God answers him, “I AM WHO I AM.”  And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

God tells us that His name is “I AM”; He is the eternal living One; He is Yahweh, Jehovah, God With Us, and He tells us that His name is holy.  We should keep His name holy and worship His name.  One of the problems that we have with this verse and with the whole concept of the Name of God is that, as it is written in the Bible in Hebrew, it is just four letters – YHWH – which are unpronounced today by the Jews and, indeed by us as well.  The reason that we don’t know how to pronounce them is that ancient Hebrew doesn’t have vowels.  If you go to a modern text of the Bible, YHWH will have little dots underneath it which are vowels which suggest how to pronounce the name.

So, how do we pronounce it?  YHWH – there are all sorts of possible combinations.  The Jewish people found that they had lost the knowledge of how to pronounce the name, so they changed the name to Adonai, which means ‘My Lord’.  If you look in the Bible, you will find that, wherever it has YHWH, it will have LORD, in capital letters.  This is the only point that I will concede to Jehovah’s Witnesses.  They say that it shouldn’t be LORD, it should be a name and, actually, on this point they are right – it should be a name.  It shouldn’t be Jehovah for various reasons, but it is a name, not LORD, so, because we don’t know how to pronounce it, we stick to ‘Lord’, or ‘God’ and the Jews say ‘Adonai’.  

When it comes to the New Testament and the name Jesus Christ, we have a problem as well because this is the translation of the Greek, Jesus Christos, but, in the Hebrew, it is Yeshua ha Mashiach and, when we say Jesus Christ, we actually miss the fact that He is Yeshua – salvation – ha Mashiach – the Messiah, but that’s what His name is and that’s the name by which we are saved!  Some people get so upset about this that they won’t even say the name Jesus and always call Him Yeshua.  However, I believe that God knows who we’re talking about whether we say Jesus or Yeshua and, if we are honouring His name, that is what counts.  

We are told that whoever calls on His name will be saved, which is why we have to honour the name of God and teach His name with great honour and respect and, because of the holiness of His name, it should be used only in the context of worship, praise, teaching and in speaking about the name of Jesus to others.  It should never be used as a casual exclamation, or a swear word, or a word of open mockery.  A fact of our society today is the open use of the name of God continually and casually as a swear word, even to the point where we have the text “OMG”, which is actually saying “Oh, my God!”  We find people, especially young people, saying “Oh, my God!” constantly without knowing what they’re saying.  This is actually taking the name of the Lord in vain and it’s pretty distressing if one is a Christian having people all around one speaking that name all the time, when we know that God’s name is holy and shouldn’t be used in such a casual sense.

It is interesting also that nobody ever says, “Oh, Mohammed!” or “Oh, Buddha!” but they do say, “Oh, God”, or “Oh, Jesus”, or “Oh, Christ”.  And why is that?  It’s actually because the devil knows that, if he can get people to use these names in a profane way, then he’s getting them to break the third commandment.  If we are guilty of this, we should repent and stop doing it.  The Lord’s name

is holy and it is by calling on this name that we are saved!

by Tony Pearce (Light for the Last Days). The Bridge Christian Fellowship, London, U.K.

Marilyn adds:

Revelation 16:8-11 gives us the tragic result of such cavalier abuse of the precious name of God:

“Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun and power was given to him to scorch men with fire.  And men blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.  Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain.  They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores and did not repent of their deeds.”

More Than Just a Swear Word

His name is voiced in every conversation.

He’s now become a “Superstar”, they say;

But, Oh, the curse it’s bringing to our nation

When men proclaim His holy name this way.

He’s so much more than just a swear word;

More than just an “I don’t care!” word.

How can we use His name so recklessly?

Our only hope is in this one word –

“Whosoever will may come,” word.

He’s more than just a swear word –

He’s the precious Son of God!

It’s hard to understand how those around us

Are plunging to a lost eternity;

And all the while they say the name of Jesus,

But they curse the only name that sets them free!

Credits
Writer: Neil Enloe

Marilyn Brown was born in Sydney, Australia.  A darkly unhappy child and passionately enamoured of horses but unable to own one, by the age of 10, she was suffering from ulcerative colitis, a stress-related illness, causing ulceration of the bowel.  She managed to scrape through the Leaving Certificate at the Methodist Ladies’ College, where evolutionary biology and geography were two of her subjects.  At the age of 21, an on-again/off-again relationship drove her to hand her life over to a God whose Word was not particularly relevant as science had proven that its opening chapters were not.  Classical singing lessons produced a passion to succeed in this field and, at the age of 30, she and Max, her life-long friend and husband of 6 years, set off for England to pursue the dream.  But the Lord had other plans.  Instead of continuing her training, the colitis, which had come as acute attacks at times of stress, now became chronic.  It was Max who directed their search for answers to the Lord, buying books on Christian healing for them to read.  It was through these books that the Lord led them both to be baptized with the Holy Spirit which, soon after, prompted Marilyn to question whether David Attenbrough’s Life on Earth, showing on U.K. television at the time, were the whole story.  Could the Biblical version have any support at all?  As the Lord always does, once we display an interest in the truth, He will see to it that we find it.  It took very few pages of a thick tome, The Creation/ Evolution Controversy, by D.L. Wysong, for the truth to burst the bubble of the evolutionary lie.  From that moment, the passion of Marilyn’s heart has been to point people to the absolute, unshakeable truth of the Bible.  The worsening level of the colitis would send Max and Marilyn back home to Australia where they began attending Hills C.L.C. (now Hillsong), then only 12 months old.  Here they would be nurtured and encouraged to hold fast to the Word of God and would provide an Australia-wide network of prayer as the illness continued its grim progress over the next 10 years, culminating in a perforated bowel that would place Marilyn on life-support in hospital.  However, after 12 years, without any fanfare, the Lord moved and the colitis began to recede so that now, contrary to all medical expectations of this disease, there have now been 19 years that have been free of colitis.  When finally able to return to C.L.C., the Church that had once been Bible-based and Christ-centred seemed to be shifting away from these foundations, subtly at first and now, of course, in a landslide.  It was time to move on.  Marilyn continues to constantly strive to be equipped to impart Biblical truth to whomever should ask questions.  “…and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…..” (1 Peter 3:15)