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Exodus 4:7
"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your
God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless
who misuses his name."
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April 3
Don't Misuse God's Name
It strikes me as odd how
certain four letter words are acceptable on TV
and others are not. I don't know how
certain words became more vulgar than others.
Particularly frustrating and confusing is when
God's name is taken in vain as we see it today,
God is bleeped out while leaving the rest of the
swear intact.
This commandment is a bit
strange and vague. Today we think of it as
not saying a certain phrase. The
Israelites took this commandment so seriously
that they never uttered God's name in case of
doing so incorrectly. This likely isn't
the intention of the command.
To misuse God's name is to
attach the authority of God to something that
God did not intend. To say that God will
judge sin and to say that God considers certain
things to sin is acceptable. But to say
that God hates divorced people is overstepping
what the Bible says and attaching God's name to
something that He didn't say. We can talk
about sin, we can talk about what happens to
unrepentant sinners, but to speak for God in
between where scripture remains silent is
improper.
Popular preachers have done
this in regard to disasters as well and I
believe that this is wrong. We know that
God dislikes sin but to say that a disaster is
God's punishment for sin is speaking for God.
Unless God specifically instructed someone to
declare that a disaster is a judgment for a
particular sin, we shouldn't put words in God's
mouth. Sin will be judged, we don't have
to worry about that. But without knowing
for certain what God did or didn't do and why He
did so, we should keep quiet and keep God's name
out of our opinions.
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