Flourish: The Fullness of God’s Name

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And so overshadow and swallow up the insecurity and the uncertainty in us with your security and your sufficiency and the security of yourself.

That's our only hope.

Our hope is not in a preacher, that is a vain hope of deliverance.

Our hope is not in the church.

Our hope is in God.

Some trust in horses, some trust in chariots.

We trust in the name of the Lord our God.

That's our confession, God.

Now sharpen that understanding in our head and in our heart and work it out in our hands this week.

We pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible or on, oh, there's one in your row, I'm on page 61, and we're uh we're going through the Ten Commandments in a series we call Flourish.

Living the life you're created for.

And just by way of reminder, the Ten Commandments are not ten things that God says you got to do to get into heaven.

These are ten realities that are manifested in the life of God's people.

This is now that Jesus has broken in, God has broken into the world and provided us with another true way of being.

What kind of lives should we live?

And so we're to the third commandment today, which simply says, you shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

And let me just kind of put all my cards on the table and say, that doesn't mean what you've been raised to think it means.

Because you can hear that and think, okay, well, I don't say that cuss word, I say all the other ones, but that one's a real bad one.

I don't say that one, so I'm good.

No, you're not.

Matter of fact, there's something unique about this commandment in that it's one of the, I think it's the only commandment that only Christians can commit.

Because when you take God's name, that that that that that that's a Christ, that's a Christian thing.

That I take in the name of Christ, uh it's kind of a uh a reminder that I'm uh I'm a little Christ.

I'm not I'm not a God or anything like that, but I'm a Christ follower.

That's a sobering reality.

So I and when the Bible says, do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, uh that literally that means do not empty God's name of its majesty and its uniqueness.

Uh that's probably the the the the most literal.

And so I want to talk to you this morning about the fullness of God's name.

And so uh I have a couple introductory statements that I want to help us understand how we empty God's name.

I want us to understand how God thinks about his name.

So I have about four introductory statements, and then I want us to read some verses from the Bible that help us think about, see how God thinks about his name, and then we're gonna jump into Exodus chapter 20, uh, and then we're gonna be done.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Uh and so let me just warn you, I've been alone a lot this week.

Uh so I got a lot of compression in me.

I'm not angry.

I just this this has slaughtered me because I think I do good with that.

I'm kind of like, hey, I don't, I, I don't, I don't, I don't use that, that, that, I'm not going around calling down uh uh a damnation by God on all these things or people or traffic.

Uh and and I thought it's good going into this, but I got slaughtered.

And so let me just, by way of introduction, make four statements.

Number one, this is the only commandment with a sanction.

In other words, this this has a penalty to it.

Uh, if you don't do this, God says, or if you do this, I'm gonna punish you for it.

Uh and secondly, God speaks here in the third person.

Uh, this is to draw attention to his name because left to ourselves, we would come up with a name for God which we're comfortable with, and that's a bad idea, like the big man or the man upstairs.

You want to refrain from that because you're emptying God's name of its fullness.

Uh, thirdly, by way of introduction, God has a deep and abiding regard for his name.

He has a deep and abiding regard for his name.

And so we we we might want to learn to do the same.

And fourthly, uh, God's name is his identity.

Uh, this this is not profound, but it needs to be said.

God's name is not God, it's Yahweh.

That's his covenant name.

That's the name he gave Moses back in Exodus 3.

And while he was, he was he was kind of uh see, see, we when I say God's name is his identity, we name things.

God is the only unnamed being in existence.

No one named God because you name something, you have dominion or authority over.

Like when we name our children, when we got pregnant, and I thought this is gonna be great.

We're gonna kind of settle on a name, we're gonna discuss it, then I'm gonna get my way.

No, not the way it went.

We went to Barnes and Noble for two hours, and my wife read out of a name book that thick every name in the book.

And I was like, no, no, no, don't like that.

Oh, I went to college where the girl had that name, I couldn't stand her.

And after about 30 minutes, I'm just like, hey, if you want a name no one has, let's just name our daughter Blixen.

And just tell people she's a reindeer.

Did anybody go to school?

Anybody named Blixen?

Can I see your hand?

Thank you.

Rest my case.

I thought that was awesome.

My wife went, that's a dumb idea.

And I said, I tell you it's a dumb idea.

You drug me down here on a Saturday for two hours, you read me names out of a book.

Why don't we just buy the book and take it home and you can read it to yourself?

That was a dumb idea.

Because naming your kid is a big thing.

Let me just show you how big it is.

How many of you women in this room who don't have children, or maybe not even married, have a name picked out you think you like?

Hold your hand up.

Real high.

Yeah, that's not how I see it.

Like, I don't want to look desperate, but yeah, most people have a name.

My wife had a list of names, and I was kind of like, why didn't you tell me that when we dated?

By the way, this all started.

See, when God said, when I say this is his identity, God's name is his identity, and Yahweh is his covenant name, and in given us his name, God is saying, Hey, this is the most certain thing you'll ever know in your entire life.

I am that I am.

That's he said, I will be that I will be.

In other words, I'm self-described, I'm self-sustained, I'm sovereign, I won't need anything from you.

You need to know this about me.

This is who I am, because this is so certain that in the New Testament, when I send my son, he's gonna come and say, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

That's how dependable and trustworthy and certain I am.

And to live and act with uncertainty is to empty God's name of its fullness and take it in vain.

It's a horribly indict phrase in the best kind of way.

Because think about it, all you married people, this all started when somebody told you their name.

Some of you were in a bar doing the white man overbike.

And you saw a good-looking woman and you walked over to her and said, Hey, what's your name?

And she told you.

And now you have a minivan and a mortgage and kids, and you've buried one of your parents.

And that all started when somebody just told you their name.

Because by telling you their name, that's the first indicator that you were being invited into a story.

I met a woman a long time ago, like 26 years ago, and I said, What's your name?

And she said, Marcy.

She should have said, and you're gonna drink skim milk until you die.

And I'm like, Oh, okay, didn't know I signed up for that.

Uh, but but here's the thing: by revealing to somebody your name, you're moving from being strangers to being friends.

So don't, if you're visiting that, don't go, oh, that guy's kind of intense about this.

No, no, no.

God is indicating something about his intentions towards you by telling you his name.

Now, to understand how we empty God's name, we got to understand how God thinks about his name.

So I just want to read.

This is like from Psalm 106.

He says, Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works.

They did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but they rebelled by the sea at the Red Sea, and yet he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make known his mighty power.

He saved them, not because they they said the right kind of prayers, but he saved them for the sake of his name.

Everything we're reading about in Exodus, in the Exodus story, is because of God's burning passion for the fullness of his name.

It is one of the governing standards of his dealings with humanity.

God says, I'm doing this for the sake of my great name.

Psalm 138, verse 2, I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks for your name, for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you've exalted above all things your name and your word.

Psalms 138:2

Hear that again.

I bow down toward your holy temple and I give thanks for your name.

Men, before you go to bed tonight, you ought to look at your wife and say, Hey, thanks for telling me your name all those years ago.

I've never gotten over being so thankful that you told me your name.

Because a lot of you women in here before, a man's asked you for your name and you gave him the wrong name.

And the wrong number.

And your roommate's like, hey, a guy named Josh called me.

What's up with that?

Oh, yeah, you were at the bar the other night.

Forgot to tell you you were there.

Dropped that off on you.

Because here's why you gave them the wrong name and the wrong number.

You didn't want them to know you.

You didn't want them to be a part of your life.

God gives you the right name, his right name and his right number.

Why?

Because God wants you to know, hey, my intentions is that you be a part of my life.

Not I just be a part of yours, but you be a part of me.

That's and he says, I've exalted above all things my name and my word.

So God thinks about his name in a way he doesn't think about anything else.

Uh, one more, this is Matthew 6, 9.

Uh the disciples ask Jesus, teach us how to pray.

He says, When you pray, pray this way.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

It's the first put of seven petitions in the Lord Prayer.

Hallowed, not a word we use, but holy, set apart, sanctified, different is your name.

Your name is not like my name.

It's the first thing we say in the Lord's Prayer.

And so, where does all this come from?

It comes from Exodus 20, verse 1.

Exodus 20:1

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness or anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, and you shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

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.

That's what I meant when I said there's kind of a sanction with this.

God says, uh, I won't hold you guiltless.

If you take my name in vain, that that's gonna come at a high price.

And so uh while I want us to think biblically and rightly about what it means to take God's name in vain.

He obviously it includes uh what you think it includes, but it includes so much more.

So I want to talk to you about the fullness of God's name by talking about some ways that we empty God's name.

We take God's name and we gut it of all its majesty, all its uniqueness.

We just kind of empty it.

Here's some of the ways we do that.

Number one, when we seek to define God by insufficient means.

When we seek to define God by insufficient means, you say, What do you mean?

There are things about God that cannot be defined, and in our efforts to do so, we're emptying God's name of its godness, and we're kind of making idols out of our creativity.

And I want to use a big word that I'll define.

This usually results in what's called anthropomorphic behaviors.

Anthropomorphic, don't flinch back like, oh, this is like a math problem.

Uh, this is what anthropomorphic is.

It's ascribing human form or attributes to a being or a thing not human, especially to a deity.

It's a very secular definition, and I use it today on purpose because it kind of gets to the heart of the matter.

It's ascribing human form or attributes uh to a being or a thing that's not human, especially a deity.

It's when we say to students, God's like your best friend.

No, he's not.

No.

Because then how does the girl whose best friend cheated on her with her boyfriend?

How is she supposed to think about God?

That's anthropomorphism.

It's kind of like we're lazy, so we're gonna take a lot of human words and we're gonna throw them on God and hope they stick.

God's like your little buddy.

Uh now you say, I I know, hey, I got little kids.

Let me say something that's hard but necessary.

Uh, even at a young age, talk to your students in such a way that they kind of understand that God's bigger than they can get their head around.

Because if we're not careful, we'll do this anthropomorphism so much that God's no longer God, but he's just one of us.

He's kind of accumulation of all the best attributes of humanity.

He's the one ideal human, but he's not God.

And I show you what I'm talking about.

Uh this is Isaiah chapter 46, uh, the first five verses.

Isaiah 46 · chapter mention

This is God talking.

And look what God says.

He says, Baal bows down and Nebo stoops.

These are two idols that the people worship.

He says, Baal bows down and Nebo stoops.

Their idols are on beasts of livestock.

These things that you carry are born as burdens on weary beasts.

They stoop, they bow down together, they cannot save the burden, but they themselves go into captivity.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel who have been born by me.

Now notice there's a subtle and profound shift.

God started off by saying, Hey, you carry and there are born as burdens on weary beasts, born not as in giving birth, but born as in, I kind of bear up under this and I carry this heavy load.

And God says, Hey, you've been born by me from before your birth.

I've been carrying you since you came into this world, carried from the womb.

Even to your old age, I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.

I have made, I will bear, and I will carry and I will save.

To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be that we may be alike?

When God says all these things to get to that last sentence and say, To whom will you liken me and make me equal?

In other words, when you seek to define God by insufficient means, when you look around to say, God is like, what do you point to?

What do you point to to say, this is what God is like?

And be careful what you point to, because whatever it is in this world, it's insufficient because there's a holy otherness, there's a transcendence to God that we need to just be comfortable with.

But I want to point this out.

Uh the market is taking a beating.

And many people in our church are in their 60s and even in their 70s, and they're kind of like, hey man, I kind of live off my investments.

And God says to you, hey, you've been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb, even to your old age.

I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you.

God says, Hey, I'm not without a plan for how to get you through this.

I've been carrying you since before you were born, and I'm gonna carry you into this last chapter of your life.

He says, I have made, I will bear, I will carry, and will save.

To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike?

In other words, God says, Hey, when you seek to define me, be careful what you compare me to, because I'm incomparable.

That's one of the ways we empty God's name of its fullness.

The second way is when we subject God to human capacities.

When we subject God to human capacities, you say, How do we do that?

We do this when we start with things like human reason, wisdom, or rationality.

Translation, unless this makes sense to me, I can't accept it.

Unless I can get my head around it, then I just can't get that.

And let me let me just say this.

This is the most egg-headed thing I'll say this morning, okay?

Now that you've been warned, here it is.

There's an unreasonableness to God that you don't need to apologize for.

Let me say that again.

There's an unreasonableness to God that you don't need to apologize for because here's what we do we start with human standards of rationality.

Then you'll you'll you'll you'll have a problem.

When you do that, you'll have a problem with the unreasonableness of God.

And here's why.

Because human standards of reason are not about standards of rationality, but what they what we consider reasonable.

Translation to, hey, I get to decide what is reasonable, and if this doesn't make sense to me, then it can't be true.

That's a simple way to put it.

Let me say that again.

I I get to decide what is reasonable for me, and here's how it comes out.

Well, my God's a God of love.

That's you putting yourself in a position of deciding what God is like and what you will accept about God.

And the question you somebody should love you enough to ask you is who told you you get to describe and define what God is like?

Because if you say, well, this doesn't make sense, let me know.

Here's what I mean when I say the unreasonableness of God, the cross.

Think about the cross for just a minute.

There's nothing more unreasonable than that, and yet most people bank their hopes on that.

That Jesus in dying on the cross, it somehow made payment for our sins, which is exactly what it did.

But remember when Jesus was on the cross, the soldiers gathered around him, they're mocking him, and they said to him, If you really are the Son of God, save yourself.

Put yourself in that situation.

Would you not want to jump down off there like Captain America with a magic shield and just slaughter all these people?

I mean, save yourself.

Jesus is like, I could have called down legions of angels and just killed everybody and just kind of said, That's enough.

But see, here's the unreasonableness of God.

He doesn't save himself.

He could, and he chose not to.

Why?

Look at me, beloved.

Because that's how he saves you.

He stays on the cross.

When they say save yourself, if you're the son of God, save yourself.

What they're really saying is, do what I would do if I was in your situation.

Yet Jesus has already told us before he gets to the cross in Luke 19, he said, I came to seek and save that which is lost.

This is how I save people from themselves, by paying for their sins.

That's unreasonable.

So when people talk about Christianity and it doesn't make sense, it's unreasonable.

Don't go, oh no, no, no, no.

Smile and go, oh yeah, you're exactly right.

The most unreasonable part of it is the cross.

Third thing, the third thing we do that empties God's name is simply this is in therapeutic worship.

In therapeutic worship, you say, what do you mean?

Worship that's about how we feel and instead of about who God is.

And there's the Bible says it in Psalm 29, too.

It says, Ascribe to the Lord the glory to his name.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory.

Glory is the Hebrew word kabbad, and it means weight or burden.

Now, God is the only person that we can say to, hey, there's a weight that goes with your name.

You cannot say to your wife or your girlfriend, hey, you know what?

When I say your name, I think heavy.

But here's what God says.

Don't make eye contact, man.

Don't look at her.

I see some of you are just like, mmm.

I see you.

Yeah.

But here's what God says.

God says, you should never say my name without thinking heavy.

You should never say my name without thinking heavy.

Why?

Ascribe to the Lord the glory, the weight, the burden.

See, we gotta acknowledge in our worship the gravity of God's nature and let that gravity direct our gladness.

But here's what we do: we come in nowadays.

One thing I love about our church is that there's a weight to the way we do worship.

Somebody, I passed somebody in the hall during the first service, and he was like, Man, that's an Alabama shake song.

That hold on.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

We saw that, we heard that, and we thought that's what we think God is saying to our church in the midst of all the uncertainty.

He's saying, hey, you gotta hold on.

He's like, oh, man.

He just walked away shaking his head.

And I was like, yes.

In whatever realm you find, truth, that's God's truth.

There's a weight to God.

See, we start with the gravity of God's nature, and that informs our gladness.

Instead of starting with gladness, what do we like to sing or what do we want to say, or what's everybody else saying?

Because here, here, let me just let me just say this: there's a lot of songs out there about struggling and stumbling and falling and all this stuff.

And here's the question that rises up in me.

Where's the glory of God when we get together and just tell God, thank you, that I struggle and stumble and fall, and you still forgive me?

And I'm not saying that's not true.

Obviously that's true.

But but but here's what you gotta be careful of.

That's not I don't know that there's glory for God in us saying some of the things that we say.

I I think it's dangerously close to celebrating the wrong thing.

Uh and here's what I mean: we we celebrate what God forgives instead of the fact that God works in us to such a degree that we don't want to sin like we used to want to sin.

There's a difference.

Like, for example, uh, I was speaking at something a while back and the and the band was uh would lead worship.

Nice guys, skinny jeans, faux hawks, we need that.

Uh but maybe we shouldn't put you in front of students unless you've actually done something in life.

I don't think you should get to be 23 and telling 16-year-olds how to think about God.

Uh I'm not against 23-year-olds, but they opened up with a song and said, thousands, 10,000 times I've fallen before, and 10,000 I'll fall again.

And I'm backstage and I just folded my arms and it was just like, Are you kidding me?

And the guy came over and said, Is there a problem?

Yes, yes.

This band is leading these group of students to think wrongly about God.

He's like, Come on, Neil, don't be so negative.

I'm not negative, I'm right.

Now, I know I sounds arrogant.

If you're visiting today, you're like, oh, that's just it.

We're not never coming back.

Somebody, in in such a such an age of cowardice, someone's got to find the courage to be right.

Uh and I just said, I'm not trying to be harsh, I'm just kind of like, and so he said, Well, can we talk about it?

I said, sure.

Let's meet afterward and talk about it.

I'm I'm I'm I'm not a yeller, I'm not gonna scream or anything.

But so we met with a band, and I just thought the whole time I'm like, Lord, how can I how can I help him understand this?

This question.

So they sit down and they said, Hey, we heard you had a problem with one of our songs.

And I said, it's really not me.

I think God has a problem with it.

This isn't me versus you.

I think God's inviting us to think rightly about him.

What's the problem?

Any of y'all married?

And the drummer says, Yeah, I'm married.

How long have you been married?

13 months.

I'm like, that's not married.

I mean, he said, I'm married.

And I said, I know you got a ring and 13 months.

I said, let me ask you a question.

When your wife gets out of the shower and is standing in the mirror and she's dried off and she's trying to put her makeup on, and you're like, he goes, Yeah.

I said, see, you're not married.

There will come a point where you realize my wife doesn't want to be goosed every time she's standing there undressed.

You're not married yet.

And they were a moment like, oh, whoa, whoa.

I said, you're consuming your wife upon your lust.

You're objectifying your wife's body.

You'll grow out of that.

That's great and everything, but marriage is better when you grow out of that because you learn to love her for more than what she can make you feel.

Yeah, they were like, Scooby-doo.

And I said, and on that note, we got to learn to love God for more than what he makes us feel.

I said, here's what I want you to do tonight, because I know he told you, hey, man, McClellan had a problem with your song, and you guys want to fight.

I'll fight all of you.

That ain't a problem, okay?

I would kind of enjoy that, to be frank with you.

But here's what I want you to do.

What's your wife's name?

He told me, I said, call your wife tonight and say to her, I've cheated on you a thousand 10,000 times, and I'm gonna cheat 10,000 more.

That ain't funny.

I would never say that to my wife.

Then why in the name of God do you stand up and lead students to say that to God?

And call it worship.

There's no, where's the glory for God in that?

Well, I just never thought about it like that.

And you're the worship leaders this week.

Where are you leading us?

This is what I mean when I say therapeutic worship.

I'm not, I'm not the angry old guy.

I love new songs.

We got a lot of songs about struggling and stumbling sinners, and we don't have that many songs about the sufficiency of God.

That, hey, I don't want to sin anymore because I walk with God.

Because I don't want to, because see, here's the thing.

If becoming a Christian just means you stumble and you struggle and you get forgiven, how are the nations ever going to see the sufficiency of God?

How are they ever going to look and say, you know what?

I want to know the God that she knows.

That's what I mean when I say therapeutic worship.

Here's a fourth way we we empty God's name is when we use God's name for our purposes.

When we use God's name for our purposes, like this past week, I heard someone say of their favorite presidential politician, I think he's God's man for the job.

And I just said, be careful.

Because then that's like a get-out-of-jail free card.

Hey, he's God's man, so we should all just get behind him.

Uh and by the way, this is uh, I'll just let me use the biblical example.

Uh this is from Acts chapter 19, verse 11.

Acts 19:11

Uh, people have been doing this a long time, okay?

So let me just read what the Bible says.

It says, and God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them, and evil spirits came out of them.

And then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you, by the Jesus whom Paul preaches, seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Skeva were doing this.

But the evil spirit answered them, Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?

Uh-oh.

See, you can say what spiritual people say and not have what they have.

In verse 16, the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them and mastered all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of the house, naked and wounded.

And this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled, was kind of re-restored to its proper place of prominence.

Look at verse 18.

Also, many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices.

And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them and found it came the fifty thousand pieces of silver.

So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

Now, see, these are believers that were taking the name of God in vain.

They were emptying the name of God of all its sufficiency and power because they practiced magic arts.

They had all these different books.

And the Bible tells us that Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

And these people had so many different things that they trusted in that when they burned them all, it was worth 50,000 pieces of silver.

And so why do I tell you that?

I tell you that because this has been going on a long time.

People have been kind of assigning God's name to their purposes.

In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, we command you to come out.

And one day the evil spirit answered them and said, We know about Jesus and we know Paul, but who are you?

That's not the day you want to find out or the way you want to find out that you've been using God's name for your own purposes.

Let me bring it down to where we live.

This is how we use God's name for our purposes.

We put a fish on our business card because we think it'll help us get contracts from Christians.

Or to bring it down to the parking lot today, you put a fish on the back of your car and you still violate every traffic law known to man.

And I'm glad you've got the fish on your car because when there's a long traffic jam, I pull out and look for the fish so I can honk and wave and cut in.

I'm counting on you to be in the line.

Or if you're a salesman and you look around, someone has crosses on their wall, you somehow work Jesus into the conversation so he'll think you're a Christian as well and give you the contract.

That's using, that's taking the name of God in vain.

Fifthly and finally, uh, we empty God's name when we take God's name and continue living for ours.

You say, What do you mean?

In Isaiah 26, 8.

He says, Your name, O God, and your renown are the desires of our soul or the desire of our souls.

When a person's converted, the desire of their soul changes.

Said differently, you begin to want certain things, you also begin to no longer want certain things.

There's a change in the deepest core of your desires that works itself out in every area of your life.

And by the way, taking God's name and continuing to live for our name has always been a problem for the people of God.

Uh and so I want to just close by reading from Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 19.

This is what God says.

He says, I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries.

In accordance with their ways and their deeds, I judged them.

But when they came to the nations, when wherever they came, they profaned my holy name.

And that people said of them, These are the people of the Lord, and yet they had to go out of his land.

But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.

Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.

And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which you have profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them, and the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God.

And hear this last part.

Because up to this point, look at me, beloved.

It sounds like God says, I'm taking my name back.

You screwed it up.

Get out of here.

I'm taking my name back.

No, how does God vindicate his name?

And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

What what what is what does this mean?

This means that if you're here today and you've taken God's name in vain, you've taken God's name and you've continued to live for yours.

God's not like, oh, give it back.

God says, no, no, no.

Because if you read on Ezekiel 36, he says, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna take out your heart a stone.

I'm gonna give you a heart of flesh, and I'm gonna put my spirit in you, and I'm gonna move you to follow my decrees.

And by the way, the nations are watching, the Bible tells us.

He said, Hey, these are the people of God, and they had to leave his land.

How how how can this happen?

And God says, Hey, for the sake of my great name, which you have profaned among the nations, wherever you went, you emptied my name.

You took my name in vain by taking it, by calling yourselves my people and living like you want to live.

And God says, I don't have a plan B.

I'm gonna vindicate the holiness of my name before their eyes through you.

Now, beloved, that's not pressure.

That's a privilege.

That means that everybody that talks to you this week in business is gonna get the fragrant aroma of what Jesus is really like.

Everybody you stop on and make a sales call is gonna be exposed to what God's like without you ever bringing his name up.

Without you, hey, hey, how are you?

Good, how was your weekend?

Awesome, went to church.

You shouldn't have to tell people.

It comes to that obviously, but they should see and sense something about us.

And so it brings me to this question I want to close with this morning.

What do people see and sense about you in relation to God's name?

Because there's a fullness to God's name that He is righteously committed to defending.

And when we take God's name and continue to live for ours, when we engage in therapeutic worship, when we use God's name for our own purposes, when we subject God to human capacities and say, unless it makes sense to me, it can't be true.

And when we seek to define God by insufficient means, we're emptying God's name.

And God says, Hey, don't do that.

Because I won't hold you guiltless.

Now, here's what God's saying, and I'm done this morning.

He's not saying to you, I'm mad at you, and I'm gonna get you.

Look at me.

He's saying, Do you understand who I am?

This is my identity.

This is my covenant name.

I'm the most certain thing you're ever gonna know in this lifetime.

Who shall I tell him sent me?

You tell him, I am that I am sent you.

What kind of name?

It's an identity.

God says, This is who I'm gonna be for the rest of your life.

This is who I've always been and who I'm always going to be.

And by telling you his name, he is inviting you into relationship.

Father, so far in the commandments, you've weaned us from thinking that there are other gods.

You've weaned us off of using images and idols to worship you.

And now that you've gotten us down to just you, you say, Hey, don't, don't, don't jerk with my name.

Don't empty my name of its majesty.

Don't take that which is holy and make it common.

It's sobering to think about your name the way you think about your name, but it's also liberating.

So I pray that we wouldn't be so sober today, that we wouldn't be liberated, joyful, that we we get to live lives that kind of emanate and radiate the sufficiency of who God is.

We get to relate to our life, our wives who is more than just objects, but it's people.

And the Holy Spirit, I pray that we would think biblically and creatively about your name today.

This is our prayer.

We pray in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Stand to your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

In giving you his name, God is inviting you into something.

So certain the rest of your life will not exhaust it.

He's carried you and he will carry you.

Depart now and live as carried people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you dismiss.