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For I know the plans I have for you,declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer 29:11 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Saturday, August 15, 2020
Today's Passage : Today's Passage:The Third Commandment Bible Verse: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.”" Message:
This is one place where older translations serve us badly. Who knows what “in vain” means? It is not a term we use or understand today. The Voice does a good job of translating this imprecisely, but in a way that gives us the full impact: “ You are not to use My name for your own idle purposes, for the Eternal will punish anyone who treats His name as anything less than sacred.”
There is, in every language, words or expressions that are considered coarse, vulgar, unmentionable in polite speech; they are reserved for sailors and criminals. (And, it seems, college students.) But this is just a means of distinguishing class. It's basically a socioeconomic device.
Abusing God's name — blasphemy — is an entirely different matter. If we believe in God and fear Him, we do not speak His name idly. Of course, we no longer use the “name” of God the Father at all: we simply refer to Him as “God” or “the Lord”. But idle use of this term is covered by the injunction of the commandment.
A word representing God is a symbol. Think of it as a statue; it signifies God Himself. It's proper use is only to address the deity or to discuss, to teach and learn, about Him.
swearing an oath on the Bible
What practices does this proscribe? First, certainly, the use of God as part of a curse. We don't want to say “Holy Jesus!” as an indication of shock, or “Goddamn you” as a light curse. Do we really expect that God is going to take our wishes into account when He decides the eternal fate of another person's soul? No. What these expressions do is to cheapen the name of God. We might say “I'll kill you if you take my cookie,” and we know it is a joke, because the person does not fear that we will kill him. But do we live in fear of God? Or is eternal life, and the possibility of eternal judgment, a joke?
But there is a use of God's name even more serious, and that is using God's name to assist in fraud: that is, swearing a false oath and invoking God to strengthen the fraud. God has never offered to act as the guarantor of our truthfulness.
Christ taught us that we should not swear an oath at all, much less using God's name, for we do not have dominion over God to make Him our guarantor. (Matthew 5:33-37) To swear an oath at all is a presumption that we have dominion over that which we swear upon. If we swear an oath on God's name, we arrogate God's righteousness to ourselves, which is an enormous sin of pride. We do not somehow magically become righteous in our lives by Christ's mercy; rather, we are made righteous by forgiveness. Shall we presume to have God's righteousness in what we say?
Meditation : Prayer : Oh Heavenly Father, in whom I live and move and have my being, I humbly pray you so to guide and govern me by your Holy Spirit, that in all the joys, occupations, and cares of this day I may never forget you, but remember that I am ever walking in your sight. In Christ's name, I pray,......Amen |
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