Biblestudy: The Commandments (Part Four)

Taking God's Name In Vain
#BS-TC04
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 06-Aug-88; 77 minutes

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I do not know how it is with you, brethren, but to me it is not very hard to make a judgment as to what is the most common of all sins, and I think that maybe at least some of you will agree with me that it is the sin of idolatry. Five commandments bear directly on this particular sin: 1, 2, 3, 4, and of course number 10 as well. It is very easy to involve the other four in the sin by breaking them in the spirit, as I showed you I hope fairly conclusively in the other sermons that I gave on this subject.

Today I want to focus on a commandment that I feel is generally not very well understood by members of the Worldwide Church of God. In fact, I feel that it is the least understood of all of the Ten Commandments, and I feel that it is understood only in its most obvious applications by the great overwhelming majority of us. And because we do not understand it, I feel that we unwittingly break it in many cases, not realizing the seriousness of the breaking of the third commandment or the position that it occupies in the framework of the other commandments, especially the other commandments that bear on the sin of idolatry.

The first commandment deals with what we worship. We worship the unique Creator who is the source of this way of life that we call Christianity, this way of life that is detailed very specifically in God's Word. Now the second commandment deals with the way that we worship, that is, that we worship God in spirit and in truth. Both of the aspects of that are essential to the proper keeping of the second commandment.

It is the third that we are going to be dealing with today and it has to do with quality of our worship. It has to do with glorifying God.

I want you to begin this sermon with me back in the book of Isaiah, chapter 40 in two scriptures that we used in at least two of the three sermons that I have given so far.

Isaiah 40:18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to Him?

This whole chapter beginning in verse 9 is basically about that, and that is, that our God is incomparable. There is nothing that a man can come up with that will even begin to compare with God and that every design, every idea that we would come up with is going to fall far short of the great majestic God who is the Creator and the source of this way of life. And yet he goes on to detail that there are those who attempt to make a likeness of Him out of wood or out of some kind of metal and they shape it, fashion it, and probably polish it all up, and then they proceed to carry it wherever they go. I mean, their god is so "great" they have to carry it. And so he concludes that section

Isaiah 40:25 "To whom then will you liken Me?"

after giving that scornful ridicule of any kind of an idea. . . And please understand that when he is talking here in the Old Testament about a literal statue that these people made, that carries over into the New Testament into the spirit of God's law and if we try to come up with some kind of a shape or an image of God that is, you know, what the particular thing that we worship (though we do not actually make a statue), it too is going to fall far short of what the Creator actually is.

Unfortunately in many cases we have been very strongly influenced by the things that we have seen in this world, everything from crucifixes to pictures of Jesus, that handsome man with flowing brownish hair and blue eyes of all things. Seems quite unusual to me anyway. I do not mean that the Jews do not have blue eyes. Some of them do, but it is unusual in most cases to see Jews with blue eyes. But here was a Man who was a common Jew, at least in the way that He looked, and yet people have attempted to make images of Him, and those things do carry through. And I do not know what to give you in the way of advice as to when you get on your knees. The best thing that I can think of is a blazing light that is out there without any attempt to try to make sense of His features.

Now, it is obvious that the second commandment expressly forbids us doing that. And the third commandment does not cover that. The second commandment does. We are to worship God in spirit, not with any image, and we are to do it in truth. And His Word is truth and the truth about God is contained within His Word. God is incomparably unique and to try to make some kind of an image of Him is an impossible task because there is no point of contact, no kind of a physical reference to which we can latch onto and say this is what my God is like in terms of shape and form. And so it is absolute folly to attempt anything like that.

But should we try to understand, try to learn what God is like. God does not want us to be concerned about what He looks like. But brethren, He has spent the entirety of this Book to try to get us to understand what He is like, and as long as we attempt to come up with some kind of an image of what He looks like we are going to be putting the emphasis in the wrong area. He has given us enough information to know that we have been created in His image. In terms of shape, God looks like we do. But how tall He is, how much He weighs, what color are His eyes? We know that His hair is blazing white and that is about it. We know that He has legs, we know that He has arms. We know that He is equipped like a man is.

But even though He does not want us to know what He looks like (because, as I said, that will put the emphasis in the wrong area), He is very concerned that we know what He is like. The whole Bible is a revelation of His mind, of His will, of His character, of His attributes, His office, His power, His promises, and His plan. And especially in the New Testament of His great relationship with us. And it is these items that the third commandment concerns itself with.

Let us go back to the book of Exodus in chapter 20, verse 7 where the commandments are listed. I think that this is going to be a good place to begin this particular sermon. Certainly this is one of the shortest of the commandments and I think that is one reason why it is so easily passed over by most of us. We seem to give a great deal of weight to those things that are wordy.

Exodus 20:7 "You shall 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."

This commandment, like the second commandment, has a warning included right with it. God says that if we take His name in vain, He is not going to hold us guiltless. Now I think that sometimes God purposely understates things. He deliberately does it because it is a subtle form of emphasis which ultimately is going to magnify the meaning of the entire command. Guiltless? The penalty for breaking this commandment is death! This commandment that we seem to understand so little about, but the penalty is the same as it is for breaking any of the other commands of God.

There are four words that I feel need to be defined at the beginning of this sermon. And I am going to put the definitions into this commandment, into this one sentence here as we go along.

The first is the word take. "You shall not take." It means to lift up; it means to bear; it means to carry, to use, or appropriate. "You shall not lift up, you shall not bear, you shall not carry, you shall not use, you shall not appropriate the name of the Lord your God in vain." And that leads us to the second word, the word vain. It means lying, false, that which lacks in reality or truth; worthless, profane, foolish, reproachful, curse, blaspheme, without purpose, useless. Let us feed that back in here. "You shall not lift up, bear, carry, use, or appropriate the name of the Lord your God in a lying, false, that which lacks in reality or truth, without purpose, worthless, profane, foolish, reproachful, or useless way."

The next is the word guiltless. It means innocent or clean, blameless or unpunished. God will not hold that person innocent or clean (pay special attention to that word, clean), blameless or unpunished. And then the word name. A name is that by which a person or concept is distinctively known. That is, it specifies, it sets apart, it identifies, it signifies either a concept or an individual. So "You shall not take, you shall not lift up, or you shall not bear, or you shall not carry, or use or appropriate the name (I will just leave that one alone) in a lying, false, that which lacks in reality or truth, worthless," (and so forth and so on), "useless way, for the Lord will not hold that person innocent or clean who takes His name in vain."

Now this commandment has nothing at all to do with the proper pronunciation. Nobody today even knows how to pronounce some of His names, especially the YHVH; the Lord, at least one of the lords of the Bible. It has nothing to do with superstition or magic. That is, if you can pronounce God's name correctly, well then great things are going to occur or if you know exactly what God's name is then He is going to respond to you simply because you know what His name is and you use it.

What this commandment is showing is that the test of one's spiritual cleanliness is determined by how one uses the name of God. That the test of spiritual cleanliness; God will not hold him guiltless, clean, innocent, blameless, who takes His name in vain. This commandment has to do with being a test of one's spiritual cleanliness.

Now how are we using that name? Is it in truth or is it in vanity? In studying about this commandment, it indicates that a person is better off being sincerely wrong than to be a professing Christian and deny that name by the conduct of his life.

Nave's Topical Bible lists 250 different names for Jesus Christ and most of those are in the New Testament. And it is through His name that God has chosen to reveal much about His attributes, about His character, His authority, His prerogatives, and His will. Now in Hebrew, to know a person's name is not just to know what he is called, but to know what the person is like. We see shades of that in the English language as well. You see it in your own personal life as well. When you utter someone's name almost immediately there begins to be projected into your mind some of that person's attributes.

In many cases, the attributes will be physical in terms of what the person looks like. And if you say John Ritenbaugh, you almost immediately begin to maybe think of a preacher. That is an attribute of mine, see, that I am pastor of the North Hollywood church. You might begin to think of something in terms of a husband or a father or a grandfather. You might even begin to to see images in your mind of maybe my height, the color of my hair, the color of my eyes, or whatever.

You, of course, would be more familiar with those with whom you have a great deal more contact with, but that is the general idea behind the Hebrew use of the word name. It is not simply what a person is called. It includes not only what he is called, but also what the person is like. Is the fellow a bounder? Is he a fornicator? Is he a adulterer? You see those things might also creep into your mind. You might say a person's name and immediately projected into your mind is this fellowship if it happens to be that kind of a person. Attributes begin to come into your mind, and they begin to identify that person much more specifically than merely the sound of symbols, letters put together in a certain arrangement.

Now God has made known the glory of His nature through His names and it is not to be abused. That even as some of the nature of a person comes through when you utter that person's name, even so it is with God. God has chosen His name to reveal the glory of His nature and that nature is revealed in the Bible by His acts.

It is not just a matter of knowing a dictionary definition of a certain word. That might be helpful, but it is far more helpful if you not only know the dictionary definition, but you also know places in God's Word where He is shown very clearly by His acts what His name means. That it is identifying a particular individual who is capable of creating the earth. He is capable, if He so desires, of destroying the same. He is a being who is capable of looking right inside a person's heart and discerning everything that is there. He is a being who is capable of forgiving, of raising up, of redeeming, of saving. He is a being who is capable of producing tremendous, awesome physical ramifications of His power: He can control the weather, He can shake the earth, He can move the earth out of its orbit, He can shut off the sun and make it go dark. These things and many, many more are contained within His name because His name is showing His attributes and His power.

Now this commandment is certainly against common swearing, profanity. There is not one shadow of doubt about that at all, and to use God's name disrespectfully in that way is very clearly going to break the third commandment, but it also would include those things that we call euphemisms. And even the world knows that, you know that they understand that much about the third commandment. Here is an article that I clipped out of the Chicago Tribune when we were in Chicago, and the title of the article was "Snob Appeal." The purpose of the article was to show how you can be a real snob and the way to be a snob is to use language in a certain way. This was written by Paul Fussell, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Class (as in that person has class, you see that kind of class): A Guide Through the American Status System. Anyway, just a small portion of this, he says that,

"One's speech is unceasingly repeated public announcement about the background and social standing," says sociologist John Brooks, translating into the modern American Ben Johnson's observation that language "most shows a man. Speak that I may see you." And what held true in his 17th century holds ever truer in our 20th because we now have something virtually unknown to Johnson, a sizable class of Americans desperate not to offend through language and thus addicted to such conspicuous class giveaways as euphemisms, genteelism, and mock profanity—"golly."

See? Golly is a profane use of the name of God. You can add many, many more. I saw one book that had about 100 of them in. But the most common ones are of course gee, gosh, and golly, cheese and rice. You see, the phonetic sound comes through there, cheese and rice, and instead of using Jesus Christ, they just change the word and make it much softer and more acceptable and say cheese and rice. Got all muddy. See, to you and me that might mean I got all muddy, but to some people it does not mean that at all. Even Jiminy Cricket, that innocuous little character who is in Pinocchio. People use that Jiminy Cricket because of the JC, Jiminy Cricket, you see, instead of saying Jesus Christ.

Now those are very obvious forms of the breaking of the third commandment. But I want you to understand through this sermon today that it includes, that is, the breaking of the third commandment includes the light and disrespectful use of any of God's attributes and character. And I will tell you, this commandment, perhaps more than any other commandment, shows how much God is to be a part of our every thought. You remember in Psalm 10:4 how David described the wicked. He said, "God is not in all of his thoughts." And if God is not in all of our thoughts, the breaking of the third commandment is going to probably be pretty easy.

God and His Word has to be the basis for our every action. That is what we are growing to. We are not there yet. We have a long way to go, but the process begins in the mind. And we have to be convinced, first of all, of the importance of doing such a thing. Every name of God reveals some attribute of His divine personality.

Now it is in studying God's Word that we learn facts about His nature. That is what God wants us to know about Him. He names Himself what He is. We have often used that phrase that God names people and things what they are. And God has done the same thing for Himself in His revelation of Himself. He has named Himself what He is.

Let us go to Psalm 8. In Psalm 8 David is giving a paeon of praise to the creation, especially the creation as it is viewed at night. And it begins,

Psalm 8:1 O LORD, our Lord, . . .

There are two names of God right there. The LORD, all caps is Adonai and the next one, Lord, is the YHVH.

Psalm 8:1-4 . . . how excellent is Your name in all the earth, You set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?

The majesty of God is revealed by the creation. Now what excellence, what majesty, what power, what glory do you see revealed in the creation? Do you even stop to meditate about it? What kind of order do you see there? Does that reflect to you the mind of God? Do you see beauty in the creation of God, and do you attribute that to Him? Do you see loving providence in the creation? That is, a God who cares and provides for the things that are His creatures. Do you see wisdom? Do you see logic? Do you see reason? Do you see vastness of thinking in this creation of God?

David said in another place that he is fearfully and wonderfully made.

Now this psalm is intended to direct our thinking toward God's greatness in contrast to puny man, to our insignificance, and yet that great, awesome, and majestic God is somehow interested and concerned with insignificant and puny man. So David here is meditating on the grandeur of the creation and on man, David in particular, you in particular, your place in it. God through David reveals that He has chosen that which is foolish and weak by the world's standards to appreciate and respect the glory of His name! That is how the psalm begins. It sets the theme. "How excellent in all the earth is Your name!" And then the next major thought that comes out is how puny and insignificant man is and yet God is mindful of him. There is the theme.

How many men really understand the name of God? Well, only those that He has chosen to understand. There are multitudes of people who can define those 250 names, but do they understand it? Do they really know it? That is another question altogether. It is not the same thing. And yet here is David, at one time a puny shepherd boy. The smallest, the youngest of eight sons. And yet he knew more about God and His name than all of his brothers; undoubtedly, more than his father as well; undoubtedly without question more than anybody in his generation, because God had chosen to reveal His name to David. It had nothing at all to do with the sound. It had a little bit to do with the definition. It had a great deal more to do with what God is.

Now God here reveals Himself in the first verse as owner Adonai, L O R D. Anytime you see that combination, it is Adonai and the general sense is that He is the owner of whatever appears in that context. He also reveals himself as the YHVH, Eternal. That is the name that Mr. Armstrong translated or used as the Eternal. Others say that it means its major emphasis is on the covenant God, the one who has made an agreement with man. It is that name that appears back in Exodus the 3rd chapter where it is translated "I AM that I AM."

This particular name, the YHVH, the second one in that first phrase, is very frequently combined with other words in order to give expression to more of God's attributes. I am just going to give you a number of them. There is Yahweh Adonai and that generally means the ruler who blesses. Yahweh Jireh, means the one who sees, and it indicates provides because He sees, He takes care of it. There is Yahweh Ropheka. We are very familiar with God our healer, or God our physician. There is Yahweh Nissi. It means God my banner and it is generally used in a context in which somebody needed to be encouraged, as in an army. You see, if the banner was still standing, then you could rally around the flag, boys. Our banner is still standing there. We are still doing our job in the war. It is a term of encouragement.

Yahweh Mekoddishkem sounds like God is a Scot. It means, the God who sanctifies you, sets you apart. That name is used in the Sabbath covenant in Exodus 31. Yahweh Shalom, God our peace. That appears in the narration of the story with Gideon. They did not have any peace, and when God revealed Himself to Gideon, He said, I am Yahweh Shalom. Because that is what they needed. They needed peace. Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. That appears in contexts where God is fighting a battle. He is the commander of armies. Yahweh Tsidkenu means God our righteousness. It has to do with deliverance, a God who delivers His people. Yahweh Shammah, God is there. He is omnipotent. He is omnipresent. He is everywhere all at once. And then Yahweh Roi, God our shepherd, the one who guides.

Let us go to Psalm 23 since we finished with Yahweh Roi. This psalm, probably along with what is called the Lord's Prayer, are undoubtedly the best known parts of the Bible. Everybody knows Psalm 23, but everybody does not know what Psalm 23 is, among other things.

Psalm 23:1-6 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That psalm begins with a shepherd metaphor. That is the backdrop until we get up to verse 5, and then the metaphor suddenly changes and the shepherd is now a host and he is inviting you into his house. Now what Psalm 23 is, though very brief, is an expounding of eight names of God and they are put, I am sure by God, to help you to see how God will be a part of your life so that you will know how His name applies in specific areas of your life.

He is a shepherd. In verse 1, there are actually two names of God in the first verse: Shepherd and I shall not want. Now you have to understand if you would read this in Hebrew, it would not appear as it does in the English. What they have done in English is that they have inserted words to give it fuller form and put some flesh on the bones that are there. But included in that verse is Roi, the one who is the shepherd, the one who guides, and Jireh, the one who sees and provides. "I shall not want" because my God is watching over me. He is going to take care of me. He is going to provide for me. And all the while He is guiding me through this life, He is going to supply my needs as well."

In verse 2 is the word shalom. He makes me to lie down. It indicates peace. He leads me besides still waters. So God provides peace. Verse 3, He restores my soul. There is Ropheka. He heals my life. In verse 4 is Shammah. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me." God is there; in every aspect of life, He is there. In verse 5, "You prepare a table before me." There is Yahweh Nissi. It appears in the word table. Surely if you are hungry, a table full of food is encouraging. And "You anoint my head with oil," Mekoddishkem, the God who sanctifies.

Just a couple more names of God. Elohim, it does not appear in the 23rd Psalm. The word Elohim is is generally identified with creation—God the Creator—and it appears 2,700 times in the Bible. You know that there is a lot of emphasis on Him trying to focus our attention on the word Elohim-Creator. That is the one that we worship. And then El Shaddai means God Almighty and indicates providence. This name first appears in Genesis 17:1, where God said to Abraham, I am the Lord, walk before me and be you perfect. He is saying, I am your provider. That is the first time that that is used in the Bible. He wanted to get across to Abraham that I am going to provide for you all through your life. I am going to take care of you. I am going to be there and regardless of how far away I seem, I am there and I am going to provide for you.

There is many, many, many, many more, like I said, 250 just for Jesus Christ alone and most of them in the New Testament. Each one of them has a shading of difference, so that we can relate to Him in more specific areas of our life.

Let us go to Psalm 18, verses 1 through 3. This psalm is very similar, just a few minor changes, to II Samuel 22. We sing this song every so often in services.

Psalm 18:1-3 I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; and so shall I be saved from my enemies.

That psalm begins, Fervently do I love You (if we would update the language a little bit), and then follows a torrent of names as David identifies areas of his life that he knew that God had interceded, intervened, provided, helped him through difficulties and trials. Now David knew that God expressed His attributes through His names and thus he conducted his life accordingly because he knew God. He knew that God was his stronghold, his defender, his strength, one who could be trusted.

Now he mentions there eight different names of God: strength, foundation, He is our rock, selah, fortress, meaning a place of safety, my deliverer, this particular one here is pretty clear, and then he comes to my strength again. It is a different word, a different name, and instead of strength indicating somebody who is super-strong, but strength in terms of somebody being able to impart strength, that is, a source of strength; that is, He feeds you with strength, whether it be physical health or spiritual help that you need. My strong God, defender, and horn of my salvation, and high tower.

Let us go back to Exodus 33 and look at another very interesting context. Now this particular occasion is even more meaningful to me because of when it took place. It took place after the occasion in Exodus 32, where they made the Golden Calf. As I was showing you last week, what they were doing on their own, they were determining the nature of the God that they were going to follow. Well, you can understand that after that, Moses was very much discouraged and disheartened. Of course, wondering how in the world they were ever going to get out of the wilderness in that kind of a circumstance with people that were so hardheaded, stiff-necked, recalcitrant, they could not get rid of their ideas about Egypt. They were carrying them everywhere and they were showing up right in the desert and causing all kinds of trouble. Well, we picked the story up here in verse 9 of chapter 33.

Exodus 33:9 And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.

He needed to be encouraged.

Exodus 33:11-13 So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle. [So Moses makes his complaint] Then Moses said to the Lord, "See, You say to me, 'Bring up this people.' But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight.' Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight."

I want you to hang on to that phrase because at the end of the sermon it begins to become even more important: "Show me now Your way." How are You going to do it, God? How do You expect me to get these people into the Promised Land if You are not with me? Show me the way that You are going to do it. Well, they have a conversation back and forth. And then in verse 18,

Exodus 33:18 [Moses] said, "Please, show me Your glory."

Can you understand how he felt? He wanted to be reassured. He wanted to be encouraged. He wanted to feel somehow or another that God was going to be with him, and he felt that if he could just see God that that would fill him with such encouragement that nothing would ever daunt him. "Show me Your glory." Now listen to God's reply.

Exodus 33:19 Then He said, "I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you."

Now how in the world is Moses going to get encouragement from that? Well, believe me, Moses did get encouragement.

Exodus 33:19-20 "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." But He said, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me and live."

God says, no, that is a no-no. I cannot do it. I want you to live. You are not going to look at My face. So then He says, Okay, we will make an arrangement. I am going to walk by you. I am going to put you in the cleft of a rock and then I will pass by you, but you are not going to see anything but My backside.

Exodus 34:5-7 Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there [they are up on Mount Sinai now], and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation."

When Moses asked God to see His glory, God preached him a sermon on the second and third commandments, primarily the third commandment. Now I am sure that what we are seeing there is only a bare bones outline of what God actually said. I am sure that there was more said than just that. But what God did is He expounded 11 of His attributes. That is what it means when it says that there He proclaimed the name, and then He lists the 11 attributes.

Yahweh El, the merciful Being. These are all definitions of what He expounded. The gracious one, the longsuffering one. He is telling him how they were going to get into the Promised Land and the secret was contained in His name. "You're going to get there because I am Yahweh. You're going to get there because I am. You're going to get there because I'm the one who bears away iniquity. And I am also the one who judges as well."

Brethren, what God is telling you and me when He answered Moses the way that He did is that the glory of God is in the manifestation of His character which He revealed through His names. We are going to be saved because of what He is, not because of what He looks like. Now we are at a very definite disadvantage because first of all, we cannot see God at all, not even His backside. Secondly, we cannot read Hebrew and know what is contained within the meanings and the usages of His name. Now where does that leave us? Well, we are not behind the eight ball yet.

Let us go back to the book of Matthew to the 11th chapter, verse 25, These verses are very interesting because we are actually getting an insight into the very thoughts of Jesus Christ. It says,

Matthew 11:25-27 At that time Jesus answered [this is a prayer of His, a prayer of praise], "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things [the manifestation of His glory, the revelation of His character through His name] from the wise and the prudent [He is talking about those people who have a great deal of self-sufficiency, and so they consider themselves to be wise and prudent, but they did not need things from God.] and have revealed them to babes [people who feel their dependence and feel their need to be taught]. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."

Very meaningful words. Think again about Psalm 8. I thank you, God, that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings there comes praise. Puny and insignificant man, David and those of us who are here in this room, God has chosen to reveal Himself.

John 14:4-7 "And where I go, you know, and the way you know." Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" And Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."

Now we do not know Hebrew and we do not know what God looks like. We have never even see His glory, even His backside, but we can know what God is like through the life and the works and the words of Jesus Christ because He is the way, the truth, and the life. Remember I told you before, hang on to that word way. Moses asked God to show him the way. How can we know the way? Since God is not with us personally, we have to learn it through the life and the works and the words of Jesus Christ. If we want to know what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, if you want to understand what the nature of God is, if you want to see what God's attitudes are, you look at Jesus Christ. That is what He is saying. "If you have known Me, you will know the Father." He said, "Look at Me. I am the way."

You know, we are not literally going through a wilderness like the children of Israel. But we are going somewhere and a way indicates a path or a direction. Like I-5 goes somewhere, it goes in a direction. Well, so does God's way of life. It is a manner or method of doing something. The way to God lies—that is where we want to be, we want to go to God—in the knowledge of the truth about Him. Now that is precisely what Christ did. He revealed the Father.

Now look, it may be a dumb illustration, but almost every one of us have been in this kind of a situation. You go into a strange city and you do not know the way to get to a certain place. So you pull up to a gas station or a policeman or something and you say to this person, "How do I get from here to there?" And they tell you, go down three blocks here to the first red light and you hang a right. Then you go to the first stop sign and you hang a left. No, wait a minute, maybe you go right. No, go left, go left. I'm more sure about that. Then you go another mile and you'll see a great big oak tree. Well, maybe it's a sycamore tree, but at any rate, you get to this big tree and you hang a right again. Now the first bridge that you go across, when you get across of it, you go about 50 more yards and there will be a gravel road that goes across a little stream there. You go across the gravel road and it turns into dirt after about five miles.

Well, by this time your head is spinning and you do not know. Would it not be much better if the person took you by the hand and walked you there? That is what Christ is saying. "I am the way. I'm going to be in you. I'm going to take you by the hand and lead you there." Now if you have somebody in you that knows God as well as Jesus Christ does, do you not think you are going to get there? And all we have to do is choose to follow. Now we do not want to follow. We can go off on our own tangents and get lost.

Look back in John 1 just very quickly in verse 18. John, of course, wrote this roughly, I guess, about 95 AD, somewhere between there and 100 AD. It says in verse 14 of John 1,

John 1:14 And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

If you want to know what the Father is like, you look at the Son. And believe me, brethren, we have a better view than Moses ever did. He saw a form. We have got the whole revelation, everything that is necessary for salvation. Now some people may teach truth, but Jesus Christ embodies truth. He said, "I am the way, the truth." Now, a man may be able to teach mathematics and what the guy's life is like does not make a bit of difference. What he is does not make a difference to what he is teaching in the realm of mathematics.

But if you are going to teach people morals, what you are makes every difference in the world because people are going to say, "I can't hear what you're saying because what you are is speaking so loudly I can't hear it." Jesus Christ embodied truth. He was truth, He is truth, and so we can absolutely rely on His instructions regarding what the Father is like because He embodied that truth. And He is also life because He is life. If we follow Him, we are going to have that life as well.

Let us go to another scripture in Colossians 2. I really want to nail this home. Please be thinking about this. You have that Christ living in you.

Colossians 2:9 [speaking about Christ] For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

All the fullness of the divine nature. He was unique, even as the Father is unique. He was unique as a man, the only one who lived without sin, the only one capable of revealing what God is like because He was God in the flesh. And all the fullness of the Godhead was in Him bodily.

You know God became a man and God imposed upon Himself all of the time-space limitations that we have imposed upon us by God. Brethren, He had every opportunity to waste time. He had every opportunity to get sick, to be a glutton, to get drunk, to produce headaches within Himself by the way that He lived; to get angry and strike out at people, to get bitter, to get depressed; to spend all His time playing away. He had the opportunity to face the deaths of people that He loved very deeply, and He had the opportunity to face His own death as well. And so what we see in the New Testament is God coping with life on the same terms as a man, as other men.

Now from that we are able to see how God, with His character, handled the situations that came up in His life. And He did it without ever once profaning the name of God. And so we have then firsthand info on what life is all about and so we can cooperate with Him in His purpose. What do we see? It says in Acts 10 that He went around the countryside doing good. He healed people, He counseled people, He laid down His life in countless ways. He did good wherever He went.

In Colossians 1, verse 15, just to add another verse from this.

Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Now with that, let us go to John the 17th chapter, verse 3. Here is Jesus' final recorded prayer before His death and in verse 3, He gives the Bible definition of what eternal life is. And also we are going to see and hear what His commission from God was because He tells them both.

John 17:3 "And this is eternal life [here it comes], that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

Eternal life is to know God, and God has chosen to reveal Himself by His names. And if we are handicapped in being unable to follow through with the Hebrew, He has given us the life, the words, even the thoughts in many cases, the prayers of Jesus Christ so that we will understand how a person is supposed to cope with life knowing the way of God.

Now eternal life we always tend to think of in terms of being length of days, and that certainly is included, but the greater emphasis in the Bible is on the way a person lives. Because eternal life is not going to be given to anyone who does not live that way. And so that is what eternal life consists of. It is quality of life. It is living life the way God lives. We certainly cannot do it in its fullest because we do not have the Spirit in its fullness, we are not composed of spirit yet. But we can certainly get started in that direction by yielding to His way and following it.

John 17:5-6 "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. [Did you ever know that this was here?] I have manifested Your name [That is the basis of eternal life, the manifestation of the name of God so that we can follow it.] to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word."

You can read it all the way back in Psalm 22, verse 22. In this psalm that is about Christ hanging on the stake, being put to death, He said to God, looking forward to the time that He would reveal His name to His brothers in the congregation.

John 17:10-11 "And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.

Kept means to be guarded. He is saying guard them with Your name. Look at that torrent of names that David gave in Psalm 18 and virtually every one of them has to do with protection, God providing for. And of course we use this verse in the sense of the name of God is on the church and that we are kept within it, we are guarded within it. That is certainly not wrong, but it is much wider in its application, and even though wider it is also specific in its application to you and me.

John 17:12 "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name."

I read that because I want you to understand that the church of God as it is today did not exist then. And yet Christ kept them in the name because Christ actually understood what God was like through the way God revealed Himself through His names.

So the knowledge of God is revealed by His names, and what it does is it helps us to keep in mind the relationship that we have with Him. He is not only our Father, He is our provider. He is our healer. He is our banner. He is our shield. He is our buckler. He is our high tower we can run to for comfort. And on and on it goes. Are you taking advantage of His names?

Psalm 9:10 And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; for You, Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.

See, if you know what God's names are and you put your trust in what that name means then God is going to respond because He will not forsake those who put their trust in His name.

Now let us go back to Matthew 28 for a shocker. Here is the great commission to the church, and I wonder if you ever thought of it in these terms.

Matthew 28:19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Brethren, we now bear that name! That is our name, that is our family name, God. Remember that at the very beginning He says about taking the name of God; bearing it, taking it up, lifting it, appropriating? When you were baptized, you were baptized into that name and what it means is that you were baptized into the personal nature of God. Did not Peter say that we are now partakers of the divine nature?

I am going to draw the noose on you about bearing that name in vain. That baptism brought you into a personal relationship, into the very entrance, as it were, of that name, in the possession of that name. That name is now yours.

The first commandment has to do with what we worship. The second commandment has to do with how we worship. The third commandment has to do with the quality of our personal witness and of everything that bearing that name implies. Now are you bearing the name of God in vain? That is your family name.

Proverbs 22:1 A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold.

I do not know whether you realize it, brethren. Because you repented and because you were baptized and you now have God's Holy Spirit, your most precious possession is the name of God—our most valuable asset. That name goes with us wherever we go because God is omnipresent. We are representing Him in every situation as a part of His Family, and He is concerned that that name does not get rubbed into the dirt through the conduct of our lives and that it is carried with all the dignity and honor that we can possibly give to it through the strength and energy and submission to His Word.

Now here is a poem by Edgar Guest. It is titled "Your Name."

You got it from your father, t'was the best he had to give, and right gladly he bestowed it, it's yours the while you live.

You may lose the watch he gave you and another you may claim, but remember when you're tempted, to be careful of his name.

It was fair the day you got it, a worthy name to bear, and when he took it from his father, there was no dishonor there.

Through the years he proudly wore it, to his father he was true, and that name was clean and spotless when he passed it on to you.

Oh, there is much that he has given that he values not at all, he has watched you break your playthings in the days when you were small.

You have lost the knife he gave you, and you've scattered many a game, but you'll never hurt your father if you're careful with his name.

It's yours to wear forever, yours to wear the while you live, yours perhaps some distant morning to another boy to give.

And you'll smile as did your father, with a smile that all can share, if a clean name and a good name you are giving him to wear.

In Isaiah 43, beginning in verse 8. Now the scene here is a trial and he says,

Isaiah 43:8 Bring out the blind people who have eyes, and the deaf who have ears.

That is you and me. In its original context, it was ancient Israel. We have to understand that despite the opening of our eyes and the unstopping of our ears, there is a great deal yet that we do not know and there is a great deal yet that we do not understand, and there is a great deal yet that we do understand to some degree, but we do not do it the way that we should. And so we can have eyes and not really see, and we can have ears and not really hear, not to the extent that we could if we really put our trust in God. He says,

Isaiah 43:9-11 Let all nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them [that is, the nations of the world] bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified [about their gods]; or let them hear and say, "It is truth." [And then God turns to His people, to you and me, and He says] "You are My witnesses," says the Lord, "and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior."

And that particular verse is so important because what He is saying is that as long as all we know is the definition of His names and we never trust Him, we never put His Word into action, that all we ever do is just say, yeah, I agree, but we do not step out on faith, we are never going to be saved by Him and we will never know Him. It is only those who step out in faith because they trust the name of the Lord who are going to know God. Because He will come to their rescue and He will deliver them. He is their Savior. He is their Redeemer. They know God like David knew God. He knew God was his fortress, his rock, his buckler, his shield, because he had experienced it.

Isaiah 43:12-13 "I have declared and saved, and I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign God among you; therefore you are My witnesses," says the Lord, "that I am God. Indeed before the day was, I am He; and there is no one who can deliver out of My hand; I work, and who will reverse it?"

Let us go back to the New Testament to one more place here (and we will get back to the Old Testament for one more scripture too). But in Romans the 2nd chapter, beginning in verse 17. I will just read through it.

Romans 2:17-24 Indeed you are called a Jew [Let us apply this to ourselves, spiritual Jews.], and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, and a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, "Do not commit adultery," do you commit adultery? [Brethren all these things are going to defile, they are going to blaspheme, they are going to profane the name, the family name that you and I now carry.] You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through the breaking of the law? For "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because you," as it is written.

Now there may have been a time that you thought that the only way that the third commandment could be broken was through profanity. And maybe you have broken away from the use of euphemisms. And if you have broken away from those two, you are doing well. But as you can also see, there is a great deal more to the third commandment because we now bear the name of God. And we have to uphold the reputation of that name because it has been stuck on us through baptism and the receiving of God's Spirit.

As I said before, I think it is the least understood of all of the commandments. And in so misunderstanding, it is so easy for us to profane that great name. But God said that He will not hold guiltless those who profane that name. He is very concerned that we uphold it with all of our might.

Let us conclude in Psalm 34, beginning in verse 1.

Psalm 34:1-3 I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.

The first phrase of the Lord's prayer is: "Hallowed be Thy name. Amen."

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