Honouring the God Whose Name We Bear

[0:00] The scripture reading comes from Deuteronomy chapter 5. Please follow along on the screen. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them.

[0:22] 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.

[0:33] You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

[0:47] 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.

[1:07] 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. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and the Lord your God commanded you.

[1:23] Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

[1:51] You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you off from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

[2:07] Honor your father and your mother, and the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

[2:19] You shall not murder, and you shall not commit adultery, and you shall not steal, and you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, and you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

[2:44] This is the word of God. Great. Thank you, Christina. Many of us know the importance of a name.

[2:57] There are many families in Watermark that are looking forward to the arrival of their first child, and you can be sure that many of those families at the moment are spending countless evenings on websites, researching names, how certain names go well with other names, which names can possibly be teased when their kids grow up and go to school.

[3:21] Finding names for your children is not an easy business. For those of you who maybe have to find an English name as well as a Chinese name, you've got double the work cut out for you.

[3:32] And then, of course, we've got to find out how our names will go with their siblings' names. Will they rhyme? They want something similar, but not too similar. Finding names for our children is complicated business.

[3:44] For those of us that are parents and are picking names, on the one hand, you could go for something really simple and straightforward, something uncomplicated, like Kevin Murphy.

[3:55] For me, when my parents were picking my names, they wanted no complicated middle names, no embarrassing names, nothing too long. My dad didn't want to write too many letters on school application forms, so he chose Simon Murphy for my brother, Kevin Murphy, Andrew Murphy.

[4:11] That's all there is to it. On the other hand, some people really want to honor their parents, and their generations, and their uncles, and their aunts, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents.

[4:22] And so you might have a family name that gets passed down from generation to generation to generation. But then you've got the tricky business of what happens if you don't really like the family name that's being passed down?

[4:34] Are you going to be the one person to break the seventh generation of family names? It's all very complicated business. You could do what Elon Musk did.

[4:46] He and his girlfriend recently had a child, and named their son X-Ash-A12 Musk. Who knows what it means? But all of this shows that names, and picking the right names for our children, is complicated business.

[5:01] And part of what makes it complicated is that we realize the importance and the significance of names. Names are so much more than just describing somebody, or calling somebody's attention.

[5:13] It's more than just showing, or describing that person over there, as opposed to this person over here. Names carry significance. They carry meaning. Names signify relationship.

[5:26] I remember when Claire and I were trying to find names for our girls, when Claire was pregnant with them, and she would often throw out, what about this name? And I would say, oh no, I went to school with somebody with that name.

[5:37] I could never name my children that name. Why? Because names aren't just sounds. We attach relationship, and meaning, and significance to them. This morning, we are continuing looking at this body of teaching in the Old Testament.

[5:52] This famous body of teaching that's come to be known as the Ten Commandments. Ten words for abundant life. And these words God gave to His people as they transitioned out of Egypt and went into the Promised Land.

[6:06] And they are words that God gives to His people to remind them of His faithfulness and His goodness, and to call them to trust Him and obedience as they continue on their journey as the people of God.

[6:19] And today, we are looking at the third one of these commands, and it goes like this. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

[6:34] In Scripture, God takes names very seriously. And names have deep significance, especially God-given names. Names say a lot about the nature or the character of the person.

[6:47] And that's why quite often in Scripture, God actually renames somebody according to the calling that He's got in their life. God takes somebody and says, I've got a plan for your life. I've got a purpose for your life.

[6:58] No longer will your name be this. I want to rename you this. And so God takes a man called Abram, and He renames him Abraham. God takes Sarai, and He renames her Sarah.

[7:08] God takes Jacob, this name that means a wrestler, a bit of a cheat and a scoundrel, and He renames him Israel. Jesus takes Simon, and He renames him Peter.

[7:21] And so in the Bible, this connection between a God-given name and the essentially important thing about this person, this connection between these two things is really significant.

[7:33] names aren't just a nice-sounding name. Names aren't just given because they rhyme with your family name. There's a deep and significant connection between who the person is and the God-given name that they receive.

[7:47] And then there's no more importance or significant event in this regard than when God gives Himself a name. In Exodus chapter 3, God comes to Moses, and He calls Moses to deliver His people out of slavery in Egypt and take them into the promised land.

[8:07] And so He comes up with this plan to send Moses back to Egypt to deliver His people. And Moses says, Okay, God, but whom shall I say has sent me? What is your name?

[8:19] And God gives Himself a name. He says, Tell the people of Israel, tell the Egyptians, that I am has sent you.

[8:30] God gives Himself this name. It's an unusual name. And the name is, I am, or I am who I am. In Hebrew, we say Yahweh, or Jehovah. In our English Bibles, it's written Lord, capital L-O-R-D.

[8:44] It's a name that appears over 600 times in the Old Testament. But it's this unusual name that simply is, I am. I am who I am. And the reason God gives Himself this name is because it signifies His essential essence.

[8:59] that this God is the God who has no limitations. He has no hindrances. He has no beginning and no end. He's not the God of a specific geography.

[9:11] He's not the God of only Israel or the ancient Middle East. He's not the God of a time period, 2,000 years ago. He's not the God of a specific culture like Israel or maybe America or England.

[9:24] No, no. He is the supreme, unhindered, unrestricted, unrivaled, supreme God that has no limitations, no beginning, no end.

[9:36] He never changes. He is the absolutely supreme being. He is the great I am. God's great name, Jehovah, Yahweh, I am, signifies this magnificent essence of His being that He is the great supreme God, the one who is.

[10:08] before the world was made, before a single star was created, if there was a Big Bang, before any Big Bang took place, God was there. I am who I am.

[10:19] And then we see why God says, do not take my name in vain because names signify character, who we are and who God is.

[10:32] In the Old Testament, to abuse God's name was deadly serious. In Leviticus 24, it says this, whoever blasphemes, now the word blaspheme means to slander, it actually means to pierce something, to cut something into pieces.

[10:48] In English, we might say to shred something. Whoever blasphemes or slanders or shreds God's name shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone Him, both the sojourner as well as the native, when He blasphemes the name, shall be put to death.

[11:08] Now, of course, this is Old Testament civil law and in the New Testament covenant under Jesus, the application of this law changes. If someone at Watermark continues to blaspheme God's name, we don't take them to the parking lot and stone them to death, thankfully.

[11:24] But the application would look something like church discipline. Maybe somebody continues to abuse and slander God's name, someone in the church, and may after a time, we go to the congregation and say, we've spoken and we've warned this person.

[11:38] If it does not stop, we might need to ask this person to leave the church. Abusing God's name is deadly serious. And this is what the third commandment is all about.

[11:49] It's about honoring God and honoring His glory by the way that we treat His name, not using His name and who He is for our own agenda, our own means.

[12:00] For those of us that grew up in Christian families or Christian culture, we may think that this means not simply blaspheming, saying something like, oh my God, or using Christ or Jesus and His name either flippantly or as a joke or even worse, as a way of swearing.

[12:19] Now, throughout the ages, Christians have always held that to say things like, oh my God, or to use Jesus' name as a joke or as a swear word is a clear violation of the third commandment.

[12:31] Christians shouldn't do that. And the reason is because God's name is holy and reverential. But it's not just that. It's not just a name. God's name is holy because God is holy.

[12:42] God's name is reverential because God is reverential. God's name is powerful because God Himself is powerful. And so Christians should never just casually throw out God's name.

[12:53] But actually, this instruction, the third commandment, is so much more than what we say because the commandment doesn't say, do not say the name of the Lord your God in vain. Do not speak His name in vain.

[13:05] Actually, the verb here is to carry or to take up, to bear His name. It says, do not lift up or bear God's name in vain. And here we see how broad this commandment is.

[13:17] Someone may say, well, I never curse. I never swear. I never use God's name irreverently. But friends, for those of us that are followers of Jesus this morning, part of what it means is when you're a Christian, when we repent of our sin and turn to Christ, is that we take up His name.

[13:34] We bear His name. In fact, the word Christian means a little Christ, someone who's learning to imitate or become like Christ. Friends, if you consider yourself a Christian this morning, you bear His name.

[13:46] You're no longer your own. You belong to Him. Friends, if we claim to be the people of God and yet live as if we're not, we take His name in vain. If we claim to follow Him and love Him and adore Him and live for His glory but then live as though we don't, we take the precious name of God and we render it meaningless, insignificant, worthless.

[14:10] We take it in vain. So, what does this mean for our lives? Well, the big idea is that those who bear His name or to honor the God whose name we bear by not using it for our own advantage but using God's name to glorify and magnify Him.

[14:30] How should we do this? Well, there's two ways practically. The first is we should never take up God's name in the service of that which is false and secondly, we should never take up God's name in the service of that which is superficial or frivolous.

[14:44] So, let's look practically at what that means or looks like in our lives. Firstly, let's not take up God's name in the service of that which is false. How should we do this?

[14:55] Well, let's be careful with honesty and truth-telling. Many of us will know that courts of law for tens of years, even hundreds of years, have often asked that when somebody comes to the court of law they put their hand on a Bible and they swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[15:15] Well, obviously if somebody there lies or is less than honest, it's a clear violation. They've appealed to the security and the faithfulness of God's name and then are dishonoring it when they don't tell the truth.

[15:29] But Jesus actually says something interesting. He says that even when we give other oaths, when we swear by something in our world, we do the same thing. He says, do not swear by heaven because it's God's throne, but do not swear by the earth because it's His creation.

[15:44] It's in His hands. And so when we say something like, I swear on my life or I swear on the hair of my head, some of us have got less than others, even that is not in our realm, our control.

[15:57] It's in the realm of Jesus. Our lives are not really in our hands, how much hair we have or how little hair we have. It's not really in our hands unless you're trying to grow a beard. But even those things, it's in God's hands, right?

[16:10] When we make these oaths and we take on or claim something which is not really ours, it's God's, and then we are less than honest, we take God's name in vain. I remember when I was a child, I used to convince myself that if I said something that had an element of truth to it, maybe 20% truth, then I wasn't really lying.

[16:33] And if I convinced myself of that, then I could convince myself that if I were to lie but it was very special circumstances, well, I was off the hook. And of course, once I convinced myself of that, then any circumstances became special circumstances.

[16:47] I found a clever way of allowing myself to get off the hook of not being someone who lies. But for those of us that are Christians, whatever we say or we think, we do so knowing that the God who is all truth, the God in whom there is no shadow of changing, the God in whom there is nothing that is false, everything we say and think, we do before His throne and before His holiness.

[17:16] Christians should always be those that are honest and truth-telling. Second way we can honor God's name is by making sure there's continuity with what we say and how we behave with our conduct.

[17:28] I'm sure all of us have encountered Christians maybe in the workplace that are very vocal about their faith. They're always listening to Christian music at top volume in the office place. They've got their Bible on the desk on the one side and on the corner of the desk they may have a book that says God is my CEO.

[17:45] There may be those people that before a business meeting they'll call their colleagues and say let's really pray. I think God wants to give us this new client. They're very vocal about their faith and what church they go to and all their Christian activities and yet in the pressure moments of work they can be very obnoxious, maybe arrogant, very uncaring and unsympathetic and actually it's very evident to all that the most important person in their life is really themselves.

[18:14] They don't listen to others. They're always talking about themselves in conversations. They're the center of their own world. Friends, these things ought not to be so. It's not just a bad example.

[18:25] It's lifting up God's name and then rendering it meaningless, insignificant and worthless. Here's another way that we need to be careful about the way that we use God's word.

[18:38] When we take up God's word which is attest me to his name and then we twist it to say what we want it to say or even worse we twist it to say something that it doesn't say really.

[18:50] We take the reverence and the glory of God's name and we use it for our own agenda. We take it in vain. Now of course all Christians need to be aware of this but those for whom this is especially pertinent is pastors and preachers.

[19:04] Friends, when people stand before God's people and they open up God's word and say this is what God says and yet that's not what God really says is a deadly serious thing to do.

[19:17] God doesn't mince his words what he has to say about pastors and preachers that twist God's word for their own agenda or to say what they want to say. In the book of Jeremiah we see this happening a lot.

[19:29] The prophets are those who are given God's word and they're meant to call God's people to repentance to turn to God and yet rather than doing that they say what people want to hear rather than what God has given them to say.

[19:42] Listen to what God says. He says, The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. They are saying peace, peace when there is no peace. They are prophesying to you a lying vision worthless divination the deceit of their own minds.

[19:58] Friends, what this means is that anybody that stands up to preach God's word better do so in the fear of God. When you stand up and say this is what God says listen up you are calling people not to yourself but to God.

[20:12] We better make sure that we are honoring his name. But what that also means is that Christians ought to hold their pastors and their preachers accountable that what is being said from the pulpit is really coming directly from God's word.

[20:26] This is a deadly serious thing to do. How we handle God's word. So all of that is honor God's name by not taking it up in the service of what is false.

[20:37] But then we also need to honor God's name by not taking it up in the service of that which is superficial or frivolous. Here's a couple of ways that we can do that. We ought to be really careful when we say things like God has told me so or God told me to do this or God has said this to me.

[20:56] Now of course God does speak to us even today he speaks to us from his word and he can speak to us by divine revelation. And maybe it is true that sometimes God is leading and guiding us according to making certain decisions or doing things.

[21:09] But we need to be really careful when we attach God's name to our own agenda or our own ideas. And for two reasons. One, it can be quite manipulative.

[21:21] Who's going to disagree with you when you say God told me this? Right? How can you argue with God? But secondly, it's very easy and sometimes even unconsciously to attach divine authority to our own ideas or our own opinions because we want backing for them.

[21:39] We need to be really careful about just throwing out casually God told me this. Here's another way. We need to be really careful with our prayers. We honor God's name when we're not casual with our prayers.

[21:53] I've been so challenged by this recently. A few weeks ago I was reading a book and Kevin DeYoung, the great pastor, was talking about this concept with regard to the third commandment.

[22:06] And listen to what he said. He said, We ought to be really thoughtful, careful, and intentional with our prayers. For example, what about praying with our kids around the dinner table or before bed?

[22:21] In the midst of all the chaos, sometimes I'll quickly pray to God for the food or for the day and then be done. The problem is not the short prayer. The problem is that I'm thoughtlessly tossing out the name of God as just one more hurdle to clear before I can finally eat or finally get some peace and quiet in the house.

[22:40] No doubt, God is more patient with three-year-olds who can't sit still than he is with parents who can't slow down to get their minds and hearts right. It would be better, friends, not to pray of the meal at all if the alternative is praying God's name falsely.

[22:57] Man, I was so challenged by that. As a family, we pray before every meal. We ask God to bless the food and we thank him for it. But after 10 years of doing that, it's so easy for that just to become a pattern, just something you do before you can finally get to eat.

[23:11] Friends, it's true that Jesus, when he taught us how to pray, we pray to our Father in heaven. What a great thing it is that God is our Father. But he also taught us to pray, hallowed be your name.

[23:22] God, honor your name. Father in heaven, glorify your name. Friends, when we pray, we address this glorious, majestic, sovereign, limitless, unchanging, unrivaled, God with no limitations, the great I am.

[23:43] And yet, praying half-hearted prayers that we don't really mean, lifting up God's name and then rendering it insignificant and meaningless is something that we should avoid.

[23:54] Finally, last practical thing is this. We need to be careful about our worship. And particularly, I'm thinking of when the songs that we sing. How many of us have come to family worship on Sunday morning?

[24:07] Our minds are all over the place, our hearts are all over the place, and we sing the songs, but our hearts are not really in it. Maybe our minds are drifting and we're not really thinking about what we're singing, or maybe even worse, we are aware of what we're singing, but we're not sure if we really believe it.

[24:26] Friends, it's when we mouth these words and we sing His praises, but we're not in awe, we're not marveling, we're not attentive to the awesomeness and the majesty and the glory of who our God is.

[24:39] In the Old Testament, the book of Samuel, there's this priest called Eli, and he has these two sons, and the Bible actually describes them as worthless men, and the reason is because the priests were to look after the worship of God's people, and Eli's sons were meant to help him in the worship of God's people.

[24:57] And so God's people would bring their worship, their sacrifices, maybe a bull or a goat or a lamb, they would bring it to the tabernacle as an offering of worship. But Eli's sons, these worthless men, would often take what God's people were bringing as worship, and they would use it for their own advantage.

[25:15] Instead of burning it and offering it to God, they would eat it themselves, they would line their own pockets, they took what was a sacred endeavor, a sacred action, and used it for their own advantage.

[25:26] And so listen to what Samuel says. He says, Thus, the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord. For the men treated the offering, the worship of the Lord, with contempt, with disdain.

[25:40] It wasn't that they were worshipping a false god, they weren't telling the people to stop worshipping Yahweh and now worship Baal, but the worship that God's people were bringing, they were treating with contempt, as a light thing.

[25:52] They were treating it in vain. Friends, how many of us, how many times have treated the offering of the Lord as a vain thing?

[26:04] How many of us have treated Christ's offering? When Jesus went to the cross and He offered His blood to cover us from our sins, to remove the guilt of sin and shame from us, to remove from us the penalty of death that hung over us, to welcome us into our family, into His family.

[26:26] And yet, how many of us treat the offering of Christ and His blood as a vain and an insignificant thing? The Apostle Peter reminds us that in the Gospel we are saved, we are ransomed from death, we are brought out of darkness into light, not with a perishable thing such as gold or silver.

[26:46] Jesus didn't buy us back with a billion dollars. He ransomed us from eternal death with the precious blood on the cross.

[26:57] Friends, in the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul, he writes, he says, don't show contempt for the riches of God's kindness, His patience, His tolerance, don't you realize that God's patience and His kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, not to abusing His offering of His sacrifice.

[27:20] Now, as we come to a close, look at how this third commandment ends. It's not just an instruction not to be false and superficial.

[27:30] It comes with a warning. It says, do not take the name, the precious name of God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Throughout history, there have always been men and women that have stood up in a court of law, put their hand on a Bible and said, I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

[27:51] And then have proceeded to be less than honest, to commit perjury. Why do people do that? Well, the reason is because we think we can get away with it.

[28:02] We think that no one's going to find us out. But look at what God says here. He says, He will not allow His name to be taken up falsely or rendered worthlessly and do nothing about it.

[28:16] Earlier this week, I was just thinking what I would do, how I would respond if someone were to slander or joke about or malign my wife.

[28:27] If someone were to take my wife and then malign her behind her back, slander her and shred her reputation. Well, I'm not sure what I would do, but I can promise you it wouldn't be pretty.

[28:39] And the reason is because my wife is the most precious thing in all the world to me. There's nothing more precious to me on this earth. Nobody gets to slander my wife and get away with it. Nobody gets to mess with her or mess with her reputation and just get away with it.

[28:55] Friends, God here says that the sovereign, majestic, supreme God, the great I am is jealous for his name. Nobody gets to deride him, to slander him, to blaspheme the precious name of Christ and to get away with it.

[29:13] Friends, playing loose and casual with God's name, whether it's in our prayers or in our worship or in our conduct or in any other way is a deadly serious thing to do. In the book of Acts in chapter 5, there is a couple who use God's name to advance their own agenda.

[29:30] They're pretending to be godly and God-honoring and to love and worship God but actually in their hearts they want to honor their own name. Friends, they both end up dead. First Ananias and then his wife Sapphira both on the same day.

[29:45] Friends, taking God's name casually, flippantly, in a vain manner is a deadly serious thing to do. And so, is there any hope for sinners like you and me?

[29:58] Friends, is there any hope for me? I, who this week have blasphemed God's name, not with my words but with my conduct, with my lifestyle, as I've lived for my own glory rather than the glory of his name.

[30:13] 2,000 years ago, Jesus is walking into the street, not walking, he's riding a donkey into the streets of Jerusalem and there are all sorts of people that are calling out his name. They're describing him as the king.

[30:26] Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And just a few days later, they're standing in the public square before Pontius Pilate and they're saying, we have no king but Caesar.

[30:38] Crucify him, crucify him. Friends, and shockingly, Jesus at his trial is accused of blaspheming the name of God because he's accused of equating himself with God.

[30:53] The irony is the only person who ever walked on earth who could legitimately claim the name of God is mocked, slandered, spat upon, abused, condemned, and ultimately condemned to death for taking up the name of God.

[31:11] But remember that just a few days, a few hours before Jesus dies, he's praying to his father and he says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your name.

[31:22] What's he talking about? The hour has come. What's the hour? It's the hour of his death, the hour of his crucifixion, the hour when he's going to be nailed to the cross. And even in the moments before he's put on trial, the days before his crucifixion, the cry of his heart is not to me, God, not to me, but to your name give the glory.

[31:43] Father, glorify your name. Father, lift up your holy name. Jesus, the only man who ever perfectly obeyed the third commandment, the only man that never ever slandered or took God's name in vain, the one who bore God's name and perfectly honored it, Jesus is condemned to die as a criminal.

[32:04] Jesus has his name and his glory dragged through the mud as he's slandered and abused as he's nailed to the cross. And while he's there on the cross and he's struggling to breathe because of the weight of his body is hanging against his lungs, he's struggling to breathe and even still the people on the ground around him are mocking him.

[32:24] They're saying, you call yourself God? If you're God, save yourself. Come down from the cross. And Jesus doesn't do it. Why? Because he's not there to save himself.

[32:36] Friends, he's there to save others. He's there to save the very people who just a few hours earlier were crying out to crucify him, crucify him. Friends, he's there to save the very people who down on the ground are mocking him, reviling him, spitting upon him, condemning him.

[32:58] Friends, Jesus is there to save those who will turn to him in faith and repentance. As we think about our lives, as I think about my own life, friends, how many of us have used God's name for our own purposes?

[33:13] Maybe for some of us we've attached the name of Jesus to our lives as a cheap and easy form of grace, as a get out of jail card to save us from eternal hell, but we actually have no intention of living for the glory of his name.

[33:28] Friends, Jesus came to die on the cross for sinners like you and I, to save us if you'll turn to him in faith and repentance. Friends, Jesus had not only his body but also his name nailed to the cross as he was executed as a criminal and a troublemaker.

[33:42] But he gave his name up. He sacrificed himself and his honor and his name. He gave up his name that he might give us a name. That we might be called his beloved.

[33:55] That we might be called sons and daughters of God. That we might be called his righteous ones. That we might no longer live for ourselves but for the glory of his name.

[34:05] Let's pray. Oh Jesus, we come before you this morning and God, your word challenges us.

[34:22] Father, we are so sorry for the many times we've taken your name in vain. God, won't you forgive us but not only that, won't you also change us? Come and help us, Lord, to not only bear your name in our lips but to have your name written on our hearts.

[34:37] God, may our conduct be in align with the words of our mouth. God, come and help us, we pray. In your wonderful name. Amen. Chris is going to come and lead us in a moment of responding to that and just repentance.

[34:54] And so let's take a few moments. Let's not rush off too quickly. Let's listen and really respond to God as Chris leads us in this time. Let's do that. I believe God is actually really speaking to us right now so we don't want to just rush this moment.

[35:16] When God speaks, he wants us to hear and to respond in repentance and in faith and in turning to him. And so I want to just read from the last part of Psalm 139 which says this, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

[35:35] Try me and know my thoughts. See if there is any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I want us to actually spend just a minute really reflecting and asking God and praying that prayer.

[35:53] God, search my heart. Search me where I have cheapened your name. where I have treated it so lightly. I have treated it so casually. I have thought that your cross was just a get out of jail free card but I have not realized who you really are.

[36:16] Some of us we need to repent for the way we have used God's name. The way that we have used it in prayer like a genie just to get what we want but not seeing who he truly is.

[36:28] some of us need to repent because he's called us and given us a privilege to be his ambassadors and yet our lives have not lived in the light of that calling.

[36:41] So I want you to take a minute now and pray that prayer search me oh God search me oh God know my heart try me try my thoughts see if there's any grievous way any way that hurts and dishonors you let's just take a minute to do that whatever God or us see if there's even here and they're in love and they're in love里 and they're far in whereas you see if there's something to know as the forgiveness and you have just heard and let's look at the other way in YOUR Amen.

[37:58] Amen. Amen.

[38:32] I believe there are some people who you've called yourself a Christian for a long time. But as you've been listening and hearing what it really means to bear the name, you realize your life has no correlation to that at all.

[38:50] And God is calling you today. He's calling you not to run away from Him, but to run to Him. In true repentance this morning. Father, we just come before you who are the great, the holy, the glorious, the one who just rules over all of creation.

[39:24] And yet you would come and die for us. You would do everything that we might bear your name. And it's a beautiful name, Lord.

[39:36] But forgive us where we have diminished your name and just treated it so lightly, Lord, in our lives. Please have mercy on us.

[39:48] Lord, we've spoken in ways where we've spoken your name, but we've just used it for our own agendas. Lord, we've been ashamed of your name. Lord, we've been ashamed of your name. Lord, we've been ashamed of your name.

[40:01] And we've been to the church service on a Sunday. Or we've just read our Bibles. And afterwards, the way that we respond bears no relation at all to the people you've called us to be.

[40:12] Father, forgive us. Change us. Lord, we've been ashamed of your name. You've called us your children. You've called us ambassadors of you.

[40:23] You've called us chosen and dearly loved. And yet, in the light of everyone else around us, we have tried to hide the fact that we are followers of you.

[40:37] And for some of us, we feel like that sense of detachment from, we feel the hypocrisy in our lives. We see that our walk and our talk are so different.

[40:48] And so we've shied away from even sharing the gospel. We've not run to you in desperate wanting you to change. But we've used that as an excuse not to even speak your name to others. Father, have mercy on us.

[41:00] Call us back to yourself. Show us your unfailing love. Show us your mercy. Show us that as sons and daughters of the King, that is an incredible privilege.

[41:14] Please, would you open our eyes to see you today. To see your glory. To not treat you lightly. But to walk humbly before you.

[41:26] And to rejoice in your salvation. That you forgive us. And you show us your grace. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name.

[41:38] Amen.