In this sermon, Youth Director Mike Bittenbender explains the Third and Fourth commandments– don’t misuse God’s name and remember the Sabbath. Here are some excerpts:
There here are a few different ways we can misuse God’s name. The over arching, all-encompassing way that precedes these three ways, we can misuse God’s name for our own gain, with our own agenda, for our own purposes. Now, we can misuse God’s name in prayer, prophesy, and proclamation. In those ways, we can use it to insult, to intimidate, to indulge ourselves, to impress others, and use it impulsively.
We misuse God’s name in prayer when we pray selfishly. When we pray for things not according to His will. We are called to pray in His name and we are praying wrong, in His name, when we are not praying according to His will. James 4:3 says “And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong – you want only what will give you pleasure.”We need to be careful when we pray, that when we use God’s name we are not doing so selfishly, but according to the will of God.
We misuse God’s name in prophecy. Ezekiel 22:28 says “Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘this is what the sovereign Lord says’when the Lord has not spoken.” We have in “the church” people giving their opinions to you and saying “thus saith the Lord.” Rev. Graham Smith said that in this way we can use God’s name to intimidate people. Forgery.
The 3rd way we misuse His name is proclamation. Rev. Graham Smith again said it this way:“That’s when you use God’s name as a reaction to something. “O M G I can’t believe you did that”. The worry here, is the lack of intentionality in using His name. There is a carelessness with which this uses God’s name. We need to be careful about the words we use, the words that come out of our mouth, for out of the heart the mouth speaks…
