Sermon Quotes: "God's Name"

“All the people were hearing the voice of God just as Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham and the patriarchs heard it and as Moses heard it earlier at Mount Sinai when God first called him.” Douglas Stuart

“Unlike the first two commandments, here God refers to himself in the third person. There is a special reason for this. First God said, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ (Ex. 20:3), speaking in the first person. But here he refers to himself more indirectly. Rather than saying, ‘You shall not misuse my name,’ he says, ‘You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.’ He does this to call attention to his special covenant name Yahweh, or Lord.” Phil Ryken

“The greatest and best man in the world must say, By the grace of God I am what I am; but God says absolutely-and it is more than any creature, man or angel, can say-I am that I am.” Matthew Henry 

“The idea of vanity is ‘don’t empty the name.’ So it doesn’t just refer to a certain tone of voice or a certain use of the word. It is dealing with God and speaking of God in a way that empties him of his significance. This includes both throw away words like ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’-as well as speaking about him in trifling and flippant ways. Not just swear ways but cheap ways, low and insignificant ways that just treat him like a commodity. And when you hear them you sense that there is no weight to that sentence, no corresponding emotion to that statement. It seems to have just been gutted. God, Christ, the cross, the things he is and the things he did are great, and they’re weighty. And there’s a certain corresponding demeanor of worship that should be there. So I think taking the Lord’s name in vain is more than ‘O my God!’ or ‘Jesus Christ!’ It is that plus more.” John Piper

“The coming of Christ has caused a paradigm shift that calls for recalibrating all former commands in light of His centrality. This approach recognizes that the law of Moses in its entirety has come to an end in the sense that the believer does not start by asking, ‘What did the law teach?’ The believer begins at the point where the Christian life began: Christ. The believer new life in Christ and so now comes to Christ to find out how to live out his new life.” Jason Meyer

“In truth, there is probably no country in the Western world where people use God’s name quite as much, or quite as publicly, or for quite as many purposes, as we Americans do-the Third Commandment notwithstanding. Few candidates for office are able to end their speeches without asking God to bless their audience, or the nation, or the great work we are undertaking…Athletes thank God, often on television, after scoring the winning touchdown, because, like politicians, they like to think God is on their side…Everybody who wants to change America, and everybody who wants not to, understands the nations love affair with God’s name, which is why everybody invokes it.” Stephen Carter