Today, we dive into the Ten Commandments and tackle the often misunderstood commandment about not taking the Lord's name in vain. Many of us think it simply refers to using God's name as a curse word, but it runs much deeper than that. We explore how this commandment calls us to reflect God's character in our actions and words, highlighting the significance of our identity as His people. By examining the Israelites' journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, we see how their habit of complaining ultimately led to serious consequences, reminding us of the importance of trust and gratitude in our lives. Join us as we unpack what it truly means to bear God's name and live out our faith authentically in a world that desperately needs it.

Takeaways:

1. The Ten Commandments serve as a foundational guide for living a life aligned with God's will, offering principles that promote fulfillment and joy.
2. Understanding the true meaning behind the commandment about taking God's name in vain reveals the importance of living authentically as His representatives.
3. Complaining and grumbling, as demonstrated by the Israelites, can lead to a lack of trust in God and hinder our spiritual growth.
4. Our spiritual habits, whether positive or negative, shape our identity and influence how we respond to challenges in life.
5. Recognizing the serious implications of taking God's name in vain encourages us to live in a way that reflects our commitment to Him.
6. Practicing gratitude and praise instead of negativity can transform our mindset, helping us shine as lights in a world that needs hope.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. www.bibleleetle5.com

The transcript for this podcast is A.I. generated and though it has all the content, it sometimes has odd breaks, spelling, and spacing.

For an almost exact copy of the text, go to the www.Bible805.com site for downloadable NOTES or to the www.Bible805Academy.com for downloadable and editable Notes, Discussion Guide, Audio and Video files, plus the original PowerPoints—for your personal study or all you need to teach the lesson.

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Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn from Bible 805 and I truly believe the Bible has everything you need to find meaning and purpose, love and peace in this life. And it is a source for forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation. Pretty good stuff in this randomly scheduled podcast.

Through longer lessons and shorter challenges, I want to tell you about it by making sometimes complex bio Bible topics understandable. So let's do that today with our podcast topic, which is this is from our series Happy Corrections.

Because the Bible doesn't say what you think it says. The title for the lesson today is the Ten Commandments. Swearing and what God Really Hates.

What needs to be corrected here is that we think we all know about the Ten Commandments. We know their basic rules for how God wants people to live.

We think they're pretty clear.

Clear. But I'd propose we don't always understand in practical ways what they mean and how to live them out.

That's what we're going to talk about in this lesson, with a focus on one particular commandment that we often incorrectly apply and that doesn't say what people think it says.

The context for this lesson is After Israel was rescued from Egypt, after God's incredible blessings of deliverance, the visible presence of God in the cloud and the fire to guide them by day and night, the the giving of manna and quail to eat and water from the rock, they arrive at Mount Sinai. God has showered his gifts on them, clearly rescued and provided for them as his people. And now he tells them how they are supposed to respond.

We're both on a journey as a people of God. God did extraordinary miracles to redeem the people out of Egypt. Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from our sins.

Without his work, we'd still be lost slaves to sin and the miserable result of it. God doesn't redeem us though, and then just drop us for us to experience all he's planned for us.

We need the happy corrections of how we ought to live in his ways and avoid doing things that he truly hates.

Those happy corrections are found in the laws and the commandments that are truly guidelines for life, fulfillment, peace and joy for what will make us function best as God's beloved and chosen. They're not simply just a list of what not to do. The Ten Commandments provides a good foundation and summary, and we'll reread them in just a minute.

Then we'll greatly expand the meaning and application of one particular commandment that people often don't interpret or apply correctly. And then we'll look at how the implications of applying it correctly can totally change our lives. Here is the foundation the Ten Commandments 1.

I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 3. 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. 4.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 5. Honor thy Father and thy mother, that thy days may be long on the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 6. Thou shalt not kill. 7.

Thou shalt not commit adultery 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor and 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. What do you think is the commandment, though out of all these, that most people interpret incorrectly? Now, here are some options.

Jesus expanded the meaning of not killing and adultery to our thoughts. People often misinterpret them.

We wonder just how far we can.

Go when just kidding before it becomes and slips into bearing false witnesses. We easily confuse admiring other people's nice things with coveting.

Now, all of these can be misinterpreted, but the one most often incorrectly interpreted is none of these.

This command touches the very core of what it means to represent our God, our Savior and Lord to the world, and that is, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. What does this really mean, and what are the implications of disobeying it?

People most often interpret it is that we shouldn't use God's name as a swear word, in anger, or as an expletive. And though we certainly shouldn't do that, myself and many other Bible commentators think its true meaning is far more than this.

And if we understand the true meaning correctly, it gives us this foundation for how to live as God's redeemed people. Understanding it correctly would have kept Israel out of wandering for 40 years, and it keeps us from living our lives in futility.

These are big claims. So let's look at this in more detail. So what does it mean to take God's name?

If you take the name of your husband when you marry, or if you are the child of a family, you bear the family name and certain things are expected of you. Other examples include if you go to a well respected school, you bear the name of that school.

And again, there are certain expectations of you.

People expect more from a Harvard grad because of the name they bear. If we're a citizen of a country, we bear that name to the world. If you are a member of the military, you have a code of conduct.

A Marine is always a Marine. We're supposed to reflect the character of the name we bear. When we take God's name, it is an awesome responsibility.

The children of Israel were the people God redeemed from Egypt. They were known by his name. When we take the name of Christian,.

We are saying we are a person who belongs to Jesus.

God takes our commitment to taking his name, to identifying as his child very seriously. He says he will not hold the person guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Matthew Henry, who from the who lived.

With you is not a new idea. He was a very esteemed theologian and.

Bible commentator, and this is what he has to say about it. And I'm quoting Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

It is supposed that having taken Jehovah.

For their God, we take God's name in vain by hypocrisy, by making a.

Profession of God's name, but not living up to that profession.

Those that name the name of Christ,.

But do not depart from iniquity as the name binds them to do.

Name it in vain. Their worship is in vain.

Their oblations are in vain.

Their religion is vain. Now he cited a number of verses.

There, and we're going to go into some of them. Here's one passage that he cites, which is Isaiah 1:11 17, where the prophet, speaking for God, says, to what purpose.

Is a multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord.

I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the.

Blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to me.

The new moons and sabbaths, the calling of the assemblies, I cannot away with it. It is iniquity. And even the solemn meeting your New.

Moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth.

They are a trouble unto me.

I am weary to bear them.

Anybody can show up at worship, living it, being a true representative of the God you claim to serve. That is quite a bit more challenging. Now Jesus quoted Isaiah in the passage that Matthew Henry just mentioned when he said, you hypocrites.

Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are full from me. They worship me in vain.

Their teachings are merely human rules. This comes from Matthew 15, 7, 9.

Just saying the right words or showing up for religious services isn't enough. We're to live up to our family name 24 7.

But how do we do this?

How do we develop this family resemblance? How do we reflect that we belong to God? We certainly won't learn it from the world around us.

And the newly freed slaves from Egypt, they didn't know what to do either.

Another phrase that is often talked about in these sections on how we're supposed to be like God in both the Old and New Testaments is sort of the overall description that we're to be holy. Now what to be holy means, the idea of being holy is a key idea in both the Old and New Testaments.

It's most often defined as to be set apart, consecrated, sacred, used for holy purposes.

The books of Exodus through Deuteronomy are where Israel is told how to live, how to do that, where it's defined in practice, what it means to be set apart, all rules they were told to follow, to find the ways to live that are different than the people around him, different than the people of Egypt. And little side note here, some people, when they hear that word different, they think, oh, I don't want to be different.

But being set apart, being holy does mean different. Now this doesn't mean being some sort of stuck up, religious unpleasant person.

But you may not be able to do what everybody else does if you want to please God. You may not have the same hobbies, the same interests, the same anything. You must settle that in your heart,.

You will be different.

And that will be challenging.

Now defining holiness is done really well, I think by Eugene Patterson when he writes his introduction to the book of Leviticus in the message translation. And here's what he said. Listen to this. Because I think he really, really explains it well.

He says, because the core of all living is God, and God is a holy God, we require much teaching and long training for living in response to God as He is, and not just as we want him to be. Leviticus and the others. Also, he's referring to this section of the Bible, what we know as the books of the Law.

They're all a narrative pause in the story of our ancestors as they are on their way saved out of Egypt to settle in the land of Canaan.

It's an extended timeout of instruction, a detailed and meticulous preparation for living holy in a culture that doesn't have the faintest idea what holy is. We're in a similar situation today. We live in a culture that doesn't have the faintest idea what holy is.

We must learn it from somewhere else than our culture. Being holy, of course, means learning to live as God wants, as he defines it in His Word.

And we know they didn't, because when we get to numbers 13 through 15 and it's time for the children of Israel to demonstrate to all the world that they're the people of God, that God had redeemed out of Egypt and are now going to take the land he gave them, what happens? They didn't believe God and ended up judged by having to wander 40 years in the desert.

I want to look at what brought them to that situation, because this just wasn't a decision that they made once they got there. There are things that happen in their life where they failed when it came time to really obey God.

And I want to then also look at how it applies to us in a very practical way. We can avoid taking God's name in vain and doing what he hates when we are faced with difficult life situations. Here is the core of the problem.

They couldn't quit complaining, which is symptomatic of not trusting God. It started out when they first left Egypt. They complained about the food. They just left 400 years of slavery and they're complaining about the food.

Can you imagine the sad thing though? They never got over the habit of complaining. The problem is that grumbling complaining is in reality criticizing God and His decisions for our lives.

You can't be happily bearing God's name as his child and then criticize and complain about all he does for you. Now, it might have seemed like a small sin and a justified one. I mean, they'd endured so much for 400 years, but it wasn't.

The sin of complaining is never small. We often think we're justified in it, but we never are.

And it grew and it grew until it destroyed first their trust in God, their witness as his people, and then their very lives.

Instead of becoming people who proudly wore the name of God and trusted him, them, they continued to grumble about their hardships in numbers 11 and on and on. They craved other food and complained again and again about the manna. They complained about Moses leadership.

They were punished severely for all these actions. But they didn't quit complaining. And they didn't quit the underlying sin of not trusting God, of not listening to him, of thinking they knew better.

When the biggest test of their journey came, they were at the border of the promised Land. And here's what it says. After exploring the land for 40 days, this was their report to Moses.

We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country. But the people living there are powerful and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there. The descendants of Anakin. The land.

And we traveled through it all and explored it all. But the land devours anyone who goes to live there. They forgot God never said there wouldn't be giants or battles.

But he did promise he would go before them and fight them.

They didn't believe God. They forgot that they'd taken his name as his people. And their habit of complaining won out. God had had enough and condemned that.

Generation to wander in the desert for.

40 Years until they all died.

Their problem in our lesson is to remember that little bad habits, little sins never stay little. Grumbling, complaining, criticizing God and people never stays little. It can become an entire approach to life.

Our identity then becomes that of critic, not Christian. Here's how C.S. Lewis describes hell begins with a grumbling mood. Always complaining, always blaming others. But you're still distinct from it.

You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or.

Or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God sending us to hell. In each of us, there's something growing,.

Which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

Now, even the secular world has some great input on the results of complaining. Listen to this. Every time you complain, you train your brain to keep finding fault with your environment.

Sure, we may all feel like we need to get it all out there about our issues sometimes, especially around circumstances we can't control. But once we start complaining. We often find it's hard to stop and we need to be aware of that.

Stanford University goes on and says their research indicates complaining actually shrinks your brain, the hippocampus to be exact, and makes it more difficult for you to problem solve or to think critically. Damage to the hippocampus has also been known to be caused by Alzheimer's. Just imagine. And then the writer that said this, this is his comment.

Just imagine hurting your brain is voluntarily doing the same thing that Alzheimer's does to your brain.

That's crazy.

Now why this is so serious?

We're taking God's name in vain because when we complain or criticize or grumble, which are all varieties of the same thing, it's an obvious sign we're not trusting Him. In addition, we're not acting as God's servants, His children Jesus Disciple Instead, we're putting ourselves in the place of God.

We are determining what is right or wrong in our world, in others, in leaders, in assuming humans must fix it, even though most likely we don't have nearly the expertise or knowledge of the.

Situations or how to fix all we think we do.

Remember Job's friends?

They had no idea what was really going on.

God was honoring Job above all peoples, pointing him out to Satan and the hosts of heaven as an example of a godly man. Satan challenged God and God allowed extraordinary loss and testing.

But instead of being an encouragement and trusting God themselves, the friends picked on Job. They accused him. They generally added to his misery.

Remember, God never answered Job's questions as to why, but he did make it clear that his friends false accusations, complaining false views of God was not how God worked and they were wrong. We can act the same as Job's friends and get God's condemnation when we call ourselves Christians.

But when it's all about me, my opinions and preferences that define my words and actions, not the one whose name I bear. Think of how different the outcome for Israel would have been if they'd not started the habit of complaining when they left Egypt.

What if they'd worked on the habit of praise and thankfulness? What if they prayed that no matter how challenging things might be, that they would grow strong through their trials?

What if they trusted that God can use trials and trying people to accomplish much good in our lives?

If they had practiced these things, if they'd practiced being thankful, praising instead of complaining, they would have built up a pattern of behavior that trusted God.

Even when the dangers threatened at the Egyptians, at the Red Sea, they would have relied on him no matter what, no matter what the circumstances, the lack of food, water, all these things, no matter what, they would have praised him for the leadership they were given and followed them to victory. But we don't have to wonder what the result could have been, because they would have developed the spiritual muscles of trust.

So when the truly difficult test came and they saw giants in the land, they would have been like David, who couldn't wait to defeat a giant who'd spoken against God. But they didn't. They were spiritually weak when they needed to be strong.

We cannot act a certain way again and again and again and then expect to suddenly change when the tough times come. When the test comes, we need to.

Work on spiritual weight training, so to.

Speak, so we'll be strong when the trials come, we can stop complaining. We can substitute gratitude and praise for negativity and substitutes work in all areas of life.

If you need help, there's numerous apps available online in this area, all kinds of gratitude journals. Even the secular world understands how important this is.

Doing what we need to do, though, bit by bit, we build up our spiritual muscles so when the challenges come, we can learn to worship and speak in ways that do not take the name of our God, of Christian, of Christ's disciple, in vain. One more verse on this, a closing challenge in Philippians 2, 14, 15.

In the Phillips translation, it says, do all you have to do without grumbling or arguing, and in parentheses, this should identify us, so that you may be God's children, blameless, sincere and wholesome, living in a warped and diseased world, and shining there like lights in a dark place. For you. Hold in your hands the very word of life. If we refuse to grumble, argue, complain and criticize, it says, we will be light in a dark place.

Does that sound familiar? We've been studying about the temple and remember the lamp standing, the temple always burning.

Now, later on, Jesus will be described as the light of the world. The command is for us to let our light shine. God doesn't change. He filled the tabernacle with light.

Jesus personified God's light, and he wants us to continue to do his work. And to do that, we need to follow that verse in Philippians. Don't complain so that we may shine like lights in a dark place.

Let us so live that we might not ever take our Lord's name in vain in all our words and actions, by not complaining, but by trusting and praising so that we bear his name clearly, and in so doing are ones who shed his light in a dark world that so desperately needs him.

That's all for now.

Please check out the show notes, a complete downloadable transcript, graphics mention and related materials at www.bibleleetle5.com until next time, I'm Yvonne Pryn, your fellow pilgrim, writer and teacher for Jesus, and I'd like to close with this benediction.

May you know the invitation of God to move from confusion to clarity, from wandering to rest, from loneliness to knowing you are loved, from turmoil to peace, from wherever you are in your spiritual journey to a growing knowledge of God's Word and in your personal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.