Exodus 20:7

I don’t know how many of you are family with Facebook, but I became a regular user during the spring of 2020, when we were in lockdown and I didn’t have much else to do to keep myself occupied.  Since then I have been glad to use it as a means to keep in touch with old friends and family, especially with people I had lost touch with over the years.  But one of the problems I have had to deal with – and maybe you have too – is having my account hacked.  Someone posing as me creates a parallel account and then invites people who follow my account to become “my” friends.  As soon as I realize what is going on, usually because someone who has received one of these fake invitations lets me know about it, I contact Facebook and the false account is taken down.

This problem is even worse for people who are somewhat famous.  It has happened to Adam Hamilton, pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas on multiple occasions.  People will create fake Adam Hamilton accounts on Facebook and send friend requests to people who follow his real account.  They send messages asking how “Adam” might pray for them, and eventually they ask for money to fund mission projects in Africa.  Adam writes, “They seek to defraud people in my name.  I’ve reported them to the authorities, but law enforcement can’t do anything until a crime has been committed.  Even then, they show little ability to address fake social media accounts … The thought of someone being taken advantage of or hurt in my name on social media really angers me.”

I would imagine that it really angers God when people are taken advantage of or hurt in his name, as well.  And that is exactly what happens when people don’t take God’s name seriously, or when they make wrongful use of God’s name, or when they use God’s name as if it had no significance.  To use the King James English, it is what happens when they take the Lord’s name in vain.

In the ancient world, words were powerful and names were chosen for very specific reasons.  You might remember that in the Old Testament, some characters had their names changed when significant events took place in their lives, such as when Abram’s name was changed to Abraham.  The name that God gave to himself when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush was Yahweh.  There are a number of ways to translate that word:  I AM, I AM THAT I AM, I AM BEING ITSELF, I AM THE SOURCE AND SUSTAINER OF EVERYTHING.  The name of God has to do with God’s identity and God’s nature and God’s character.  God’s name makes claims about who God is and how we are meant to be in relationship with God.

The word “Yahweh” appears over 6,000 times in the Hebrew Bible, which is more than all the other names for God combined.  And yet in many English translations, it doesn’t appear even once.  Instead, the word has been translated as “Lord.”  Why is that?  Well, sometime before or near the time of Jesus, the Jewish people became concerned that someone could break the third commandment by accident, somehow misusing God’s name without intending to.  So they decided that it was better to not say God’s name at all.  Written Hebrew has no vowels, so the scribes would use dots in between the consonants to show what vowel sounds to use in pronouncing the word.  When they came to “Yahweh,” they put in the vowel sounds for the word “Adonai” or “Lord,” to remind readers not to speak God’s name but to substitute Adonai for Yahweh.  And that is where the practice started of using Lord in place of Yahweh.

Adam Hamilton, in his book, Words of Life, stresses that is important to use the name “Yahweh.”  It is the name that God said we should know him by.  And it reminds us that our lives and all that exists in this world are completely dependent on God, I AM, I AM THE SOURCE AND SUSTAINER OF ALL THINGS, I AM BEING.

There are several ways that this commandment might be broken.  The one we most often think about is profanity.  The word “profanity” comes from the Latin pro (outside) and fanum (temple), and literally means taking something holy from inside the temple and throwing it outside.  In other words, it is defiling something that is holy.  To profane God’s name is to use it without reverence, to use it casually, as if it didn’t matter.  The most common way I hear this done is when people say, “Oh my God!” or “Jesus Christ!” when they are excited or frustrated or angry, when they stub their toe in the dark or hit their thumb with a hammer.  Anne Robertson tells about a colleague of hers who moved to a new church.  When he and his young son were with a group of some of the members of the congregation, his son said, “Jesus, it’s hot!”  The pastor was really embarrassed that his son said that, and quickly spoke up, “His mother taught him that!” 

But as Joy Davidman puts it in her book, Smoke on the Mountain, “casual profanity is perhaps the least of our offenses against [the third commandment].”  And Anne Robertson says, “God’s name isn’t to be thrown around lightly or used simply for our own gain or advantage … but this is one of the smaller concerns related to this commandment.  The real damage comes, I believe, not from using God’s name inappropriately in our speech, but by taking God’s name as our own and then acting in ways opposed to God’s love.” 

Adam Hamilton talks about this in terms of misrepresenting God.  As those who worship God and follow Jesus Christ, we represent God in the world by our words and our actions.  But we can misrepresent God when we live in ways that desecrate his name.  I think about priests who abuse children or televangelists who promise to bless anyone who sends in a monetary donation.  But it can also mean average people who simply do not practice what they say they believe.  Or it can refer to religious fanatics who attach the Lord’s name to acts of violence or war.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked to speak at Yale Divinity School in March 2004.  In her address, she said, “Not long after September 11th, I was on a panel with Elie Wiesel.  He asked us to name the unhappiest character in the Bible.  Some said Job, because of the trials he endured.  Some said Moses, because he was denied entry into the Promised Land … Wiesel said he believed the right answer was God, because of the pain he must surely feel in seeing us fight, kill, and abuse each other in the Lord’s name.”

Another way that the third commandment has been interpreted is in terms of promise keeping and truth telling.  Many scholars think that the purpose of this commandment had to do with swearing oaths in the name of the Lord.  In the ancient world when people made promises or wanted to stress that they were telling the truth, they would swear by the name of their god.  We still do that; in court, it used to be common for people to “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”  And Presidents put their hand on the Bible to take the oath of office.  The Jewish Study Bible translates the third commandment as, “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God.”  Adam Hamilton writes, “We live in a time when truth seems hard to come by and promises are often not kept.  We’ve seen national leaders of both political parties tell bald-faced lies with no repercussions.  We no longer find it surprising when someone goes back on their word after their promise becomes costly.  But people of integrity continue to tell the truth.  They do the right thing even when it is costly.  They do not say one thing and do another.”

While the third commandment may be the most trivialized one in American culture, according to Anne Robertson, it is still an important commandment and relevant to our lives today.  Whether we are taking God’s name too lightly or using it in profane ways, misrepresenting God by the way we speak and act in God’s name or failing to keep our word and honor our commitments made in God’s name, we are still guilty of breaking this commandment.  And when we do that, we show a lack of reverence toward God.  And we are demonstrating to the people around us that we are not taking God – or God’s name – seriously enough.