Sermon Summary
Pastor Jason emphasized the importance of honoring God's name, referencing Deuteronomy 5:11. He contrasted those who love God with those who hate Him, highlighting the significance of knowing God as He truly is. Jason explained the historical reverence for God's name, particularly among Jews and early Christians, and the modern practice of using "LORD" in uppercase to represent it. He outlined three prohibitions: blasphemy, profanity, and frivolity, and stressed the need for Christians to live out the commandment by praising, praying, and preaching God's name. He concluded by emphasizing the transformative power of salvation through Jesus Christ.
 
 
Sermon Transcript
 
Honouring God’s Name: Introduction and Context
Thank you for joining us in our series through the book of Deuteronomy. As has been prayed, we are going through a series within a series. The biggest series is Deuteronomy, but the series within the series is a deep look at the Ten Commandments found in Deuteronomy 5.
 
If you go to Starbucks today and order a cup of coffee, they will ask you for your name, and then they will write your name on the cup of coffee that you order, and they will call you out and then pass you that cup of coffee. But sometimes the names can be written wrongly, or at least the employee or the service staff may get your name wrong. For example, someone's name is called Aline, and when she received her cup of coffee, the cup says “alien”. Unfortunate, but it happens. Or sometimes someone whose name is Maureen, she received a cup of coffee and it writes “moron”. Oh no, got it wrong! Or maybe your name is Jackie, and somehow the service staff records it as “Shaggy”. Or maybe your name is Eric, but when you receive your cup of coffee, it seems to say “evil”. Or your name is Andy, and when they give it to you, it reads “auntie”. Well, these names are made fun of right here, unfortunately. But there are some names you should never make fun of.
 
Cultural and Historical Reverence for God’s Name
When I was in Bangkok and was touring there, we were talking about the politics and the system of government there in that land with the driver, and he reminded us never to say anything disparaging about the king. Because in their country, there's this law, lése-majesté, about the Thai King and the royal family. And if you say something insulting, you will be prosecuted. Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code says, “Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.” Well, you should never insult the king in Thailand, but more so, you should never insult the King of kings, God Himself.
 
That's where we come to in the third commandment, where it says, “You shall not take God's name in vain.” To take God's name in vain is to treat His name as empty or worthless, or to take His name overly lightly. This is what this commandment is all about. It's about honouring, revering the name of God, because God's name is not just a title of God, but it represents the totality of God, who He is. So don't take God's name lightly. Don't insult Him. Don't treat it as if it is worthless or empty. But instead, honour and revere God.
 
And throughout history, people have taken this to heart, in particular the Jewish people, and the way they look at God's name, the way they treat God's name, the way they write God's name. Now, God's name is given in Exodus 3, and it is given in four letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We today anglicise it– YHWH. There are four letters, so there is this tetra to it. So the name of God is what they call the tetragrammaton, or that's what it is described as. And this name is too holy for the Jews to pronounce. They regard God's name highly, and instead of calling God according to His name, they substitute the name, and they would address God by “Adonai”, which means Lord or they substitute it with “HaShem”, the Name, so as to avoid pronouncing God's name altogether. That's out of reverence.
 
The scribe, when he copies God's name onto a piece of paper, a parchment, in ancient times, he would have to use a special quill and a fresh ink, like almost using a fresh pen each time. So, he may copy the words of the Bible, and when he comes to the name of God, he's got to change–change pen, change ink. And when he starts writing the name, he could not stop. He could not be interrupted. The pen also should not be dipped in ink for writing the name twice. It's got to be one shot. This is the way they show reverence to the name. So it is to be written in one continuous act of devotion. When he writes it, he cannot erase or alter it, and if a mistake was made, the entire parchment might have to be discarded. So imagine they write Genesis 1, and then they write very well until that one part where it comes to the name of God, and they make a mistake somewhere, the whole piece has to be forfeited, discarded. Can’t be used. And any parchment containing the Divine Name of God could not be destroyed, but they would have to be stored in a storage room until they could be buried in sacred ground.
 
So that's how the Jews revere God's name. Christians throughout history, in the first and third century, in the early Christian-dom, Christians did not pronounce the tetragrammaton similarly, but we use the word or they use the word “Lord” instead. Later on, medieval Christianity also tries to avoid pronouncing the tetragrammaton, which actually you can't quite pronounce, but they reconstruct it to the form of “Jehovah”. Now that's not really how God's name is to be pronounced, but that's how medieval Christians have kind of combined the tetragrammaton with “Adonai”, which means Lord. So you notice that the tetragrammaton is all consonants, meaning there's no vowels. So they take the vowels from “Adonai”, which is A, O, A, kind of thing. And they slot it in between the consonants. So you have Y-A-H-O-Y-A-H. You get that? And so it sounds like “Yahoah”, which is very Cantonese-sounding. And that's why in Chinese we call ye1 he2 hua2.

Modern Practices and Prohibitions
Today we say “Jehovah”, but it comes from this medieval Christian practice, out of reverence for God's name. In the Reformation and in the Protestant Bibles, same thing. We avoid pronouncing God's name and they translate it therefore with the upper case, caps, L-O-R-D, to indicate the tetragrammaton. And today, in modern Christianity, we also use L-O-R-D in caps to represent the name of God. So when it's lower case, l-o-r-d, meaning it's not in caps, it refers to “master” or “Lord”. But when it's upper case, caps, it refers to the name of God. That's how your Bibles are written today. So that's how historically people have looked at this command, “you shall not take God's name in vain”, and applied it in the name of God, in how God’s name is to be written and pronounced and read and so on. But today, let's look at how this practically should impact the way we live. How do we live out this commandment? Well, I will give you three things to think about.
 
Number one, let's think about the prohibitions of this commandment. What does this command prohibit? Clearly, I think this commandment prohibits any blasphemy. What is blasphemy? Blasphemy means cursing God's name. It means disparaging God's name directly. Now we know that the Ten Commandments were not only given in Deuteronomy. It was originally given in Exodus. So in Exodus 20 this command was given. And in Leviticus, we have an example, a kind of index case, the first case where people would blatantly take God's name in vain. In Leviticus 24, we read of a certain Israelite woman's son and a certain Israelite man who fought in the camp. And somehow this unnamed woman's son blasphemed the Name and cursed. So he blasphemed God, he took God's name in vain, and what was done to him is given here: “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him.” Now you understand the severity here. This is an index case, and God would make it very clear that whoever takes the name of the Lord in vain, God will not hold him guiltless. So this is a severe sin against God, and he died. So today, we must be very careful about blaspheming God. The Bible does talk about how there are people today who call Jesus accursed. Well, that is a kind of blasphemy that is prohibited by this law.
 
A second thing that is prohibited, I think, by this law, is not really directly cursing God and His name, but using God's name as a kind of curse. And I will call this profanity, using God's name as a kind of profanity. Now, what do you mean by that? Well, I asked our CG leaders on Tuesday this week, we meet on Tuesday, every Tuesday, to look into the sermon that was preached and the sermon that is to come so that we are better prepared as we lead our care groups. And I asked them, “Should I say, should I list the ways people use God's name as a curse word?” And we were very divided actually, because some CG leaders feel that I shouldn't because it will teach the church how to use God's name as a kind of curse. But there are others who say, “But if you don't show, they do not know what you're talking about.” So I said, “I think I will think about it.” But I've decided I will show. So don't worry, your curiosity will be satisfied, but I hope you understand that the reason why I show you is not to teach you how to curse, but to show you that this is commonly done, and we should be careful not to do it, because it's very easy to just follow how people use such words or say such things. It's like, I'm telling you, it's like maybe our media portraying vaping. The media is not teaching you how to vape; the media is telling you it is wrong to vape. So I'm showing you the wrong thing that you should not do. So how people use God's name? A whole list here. They are used as a kind of a profanity, curse word. A teacher, a Sunday School teacher, was asking the children, teaching the children about Jesus, and so she asked the children, “What do you know about Jesus?” A boy says, “Jesus turned water to wine.” Another girl says, “Jesus chased the money changers from the temple.” Another boy then says, “Jesus died on the cross for our sins.” And then one other boy raised his hand and said, “Jesus doesn't know how to drive.” What do you mean? The boy says, “While we were driving to church this morning, a car stopped in front of us, and my dad said, ‘Jesus Christ, don't you know how to drive?’” That's how people use God's name, unfortunately. But it is a kind of profanity, a curse word. On a more serious side, there are people in times past who understand the gravity. They write about it. William Cowper is one who wrote, “It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme rudely appealed to on each trifling theme! Maintain your rank, vulgarity despise; to swear is neither brave, polite nor wise. You would not swear upon the bed of death. Reflect! Your Master could stop your breath.” So we must be careful about taking God's name in vain, making it worthless or empty, avoid blasphemy, profanity.
 
Thirdly, frivolity. What do I mean by frivolity? In other words, you don't use God's name, you don't curse God's name. You don't use God's name as a kind of profanity, but you still take His name lightly when you use it thoughtlessly, frivolously, you use it as a kind of empty filler. Empty filler–that's kind of an oxymoron, but you use it as a filler for your speech when you don't really mean anything at all. There are some people who just talk “Christianese”, and they put in “God”, “Lord”, “Father” in between all that they say. There are some people who may even use “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord” almost like kou3 tou2 chan2 (Chinese for “pet phrase”). It's a pet phrase they just mindlessly say. Now, if you really mean “praise the Lord”, wow, that's fantastic. That's good. Say it. But if you just say it out of habit, then I don't think that's a very good idea at all. You're taking God's name lightly. Imagine if I just use any of our leader's name, Prime Minister's name, and everything I say, I say, okay, better don't say… (audience laughs) but if every time I say something, I just add his name, add his name, he'll be irritated. And you would say I don't really respect him after all, right, if I use it very mindlessly. But maybe even more obvious is in our prayer, because when we pray, sometimes our minds are not fast enough. We kind of do not want to be pausing too much in front of people, and we just use “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, God. God, Father, Father, Father, Lord God, Father, Lord God, Father, Lord God, Father” and we say it so many times, almost like do you really mean it, or you're just trying to use God's name to fill in the silence? That's frivolity. So be careful. And I'm not saying any one of us can be so articulate, but I'm just saying maybe it's good for us to have silence rather than be too urgent to fill it up with God's name, Jesus Christ and so on.
 
Hypocrisy and Broader Implications
These are the ways we may take God's name lightly, but there is one more that is even more common than these three, one word that summarises it, and it is hypocrisy. We can use God's name as a cover. Cover for what? Cover for your lives. When we swear by God's name, but we never intend to fulfill it, that is taking God's name in vain, because you're saying, “God, be a witness”, but you actually don't care. Not a problem if I should violate what I swore or what I say, because I don't really value God anyway. And that is what Jesus warned against in the New Testament, right? You swear, but you never intend to do. You lie. Another way we can be hypocritical using God's name is when we throw God's name all around. Have you heard of people who come to you and say, “God told me this, God told me that”? Have or not? “Wow, last night God told me this.” Now, I'm not ruling out the possibility that God can speak to you directly. He may. But if He didn't, and it's just a feeling you have, and you say, “God told me”, you got to be very careful when you say that. And there are people who just love to throw God's name around to just add some weight to what they say. I think that should be reconsidered. There are even people who lie about it: “God told me” but actually God never told the person. We can know it. For example, a common story I've always shared is I heard a preacher once said he went to China to preach, and one of the ladies came up to him and said, “mu4 shi1 (pastor), shen2 gen1 wo3 shuo1 (God told me), wo3 yao4 jia4 gei2 ni2 (I will marry you)”. The pastor immediately looking at her… the pastor immediately said to her, “God did not tell you that. You are lying.” “How do you know?” “Because I am already married.” Will God break His own laws? Is God wrong, or is she wrong? There is no question. Not only did she lie, she lied using God's name. That is wrong. That is hypocrisy. There are plenty of people today who will use God's name, use His name to profit themselves in business and in scams. That's what false teachers do, and they will be dealt with severely. God will not hold them guiltless. So these are the ways we may take God's name in vain, and I would summarize them as all with regard to words.
 
Remember we talked about how to remember the Ten Commandments? First commandment: no other gods. Second commandment: not bow down. Third commandment: don't take God's name in vain. So we talked about the speech. But even though that's the way we remember the third commandment, it is not the only way we can break this commandment, because we break this commandment not just with our words, but also with our works. We can be guilty of taking God's name in vain by the way we live, not just our lips, by the way we walk, and not just our talk. For the Bible gives us examples how this is done. In Malachi 1, “But you say, ‘How have we despised Your name? Did we say anything?’ No, it's by the way, you pollute My altar. You offer polluted food upon My altar. You gave Me unclean things, things I do not want, things that are blemished. You look like you're worshiping Me, but actually you are desecrating My Name. And again, but you say, ‘How have we polluted You?’ By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. So by the way you live, by the way you offer, you despise My Name. You take My Name lightly. You insult Me.” And the Apostle Paul saying in Romans, talking about the Jews, saying about the Jews–his own people, “While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you yourself commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You do all these things. And you who boast in the law dishonour God by breaking the law. For it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’. By the way you live, you blaspheme My Name. You're supposed to be My people, but you don't live rightly before the Gentiles. And so My Name is insulted, is shamed because of you.”
 
So we today can shame God, insult God by the way we live, by the way we work, by the way we walk, by the way we live our lives. It is said that the number one cause of atheism–atheism is believing that there is no God. The number one cause for people to don't want to believe God, to believe in atheism is very…wow you all know, ah? It’s paradoxically Christians. Now whether this is true or not is debatable, but at least this is what someone said. And he goes on, “Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.” You say, you say, you say, you say, but you do different. And they say, “This kind of inconsistency, I cannot believe is right.” And because of the way Christians live, they say, “This God that they say they believe is not worthy.” And God is insulted and God is blasphemed because of us.
 
The Role of the Law and the Gospel
So this law gives us the prohibitions, both in words and in works, both in our talk and our walk. But let me quickly go to something that you may be familiar already, and that is, what are the other purposes of this law, besides showing what we should not do? Well, the other purposes are simple to the regular church goer here at Gospel Light, but maybe a bit new or a bit cheem (Singlish for profound) to those who are not familiar. Let me just summarise it in these two phrases. The purpose of the Ten Commandments, and therefore also this third commandment, is to reveal to you how sinful you are. Just now, as I shared all the things that we are forbidden to do, maybe it makes you realise, “Oh, actually, I've broken this law before. I've used God's name in vain. I've cursed God, or I've used the name of God as a curse word, or I've taken His name very lightly, and I've laughed at Him and insulted Him. I've been guilty.” Well, actually, I'm glad you at least feel that, because you are humble enough to admit that. It's good, and that's what the law is for. The law is given so that we may be confronted with the black and white to realise that we are not perfect, we are sinful, we are guilty before a holy God. You see, this is a very important concept to grasp. The law, including this third commandment, is not given as a method for you to get to God. It's not what you need to do or to fulfill in order to reach God. Many people think that the Ten Commandments are the ten things I do so that I reach God. No, the ten Commandments are the ten statements to tell you you are guilty, you are sinful and you cannot save yourself. The Ten Commandments function like an X-ray machine to show you your cancer, but it has no power to take out the cancer. So the Ten Commandments, including this one, is not going to save you. The law has no power to save you, but the law is here to show you.
 
But then God has a purpose, besides revealing our sinfulness in the law. The second purpose, which is super important, is that it now redirects you to our Saviour. The law has no power to save, but it will channel you to Jesus Christ, who is able to save. The X-ray machine cannot take away your cancer, but the X-ray machine will show you your need so that you may turn to the surgeon to take out your cancer. Now, who is this Jesus? Why is He able to save? What's so great about Him? Let me tell you this. He is God's Son. He is God's Son who has been promised since the Garden of Eden, who will come and defeat Satan and sin and hell. And this Saviour, who is not just truly God and truly man born into this world, but He is the only One who fulfilled all the commandments. He is the only One born without sin and lived without sin and died without sin, including the third commandment.
 
We see in John 17, He said these words in His prayer to the Father, to God, He says, “I have manifested Your Name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world. I have revealed Your Name.” The name of God refers to the totality of who God is. He is saying, “I fully revealed You, O Father, to the people of this world.” He goes on to say in verse 26, “I made known to them Your Name, and I will continue to make it known.” So unlike us who shame God's name, He magnifies, He manifests, He shows forth God's name, and that's why He could say, at the beginning, “I've glorified You on earth having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do.” Jesus is our Saviour. Why? Because He is uniquely the God-man given to us to save us from our sins. He is the only One who lived all the requirements of the law perfectly, flawlessly. And after He had done all that, He went to the cross and laid down His life. He racked up all the credits of righteousness, and then He paid it on the cross. He paid it in order to save you and I from the sins we have racked up our whole lives, including breaking the third commandment, the first, the second, the third, all the commandments. He shed His blood so that with His blood, our sins may be forgiven, and He rose again the third day, declaring victory over sin. So today, Christians, people who read the Bible, understand the Bible, realise that the law can't save, but the Lord can save. We realise when Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished”, He's saying that “the debt of sin you owe is paid for by Me”. This is our Saviour.
 
And you know, there is a story in the Bible long time ago about a man who caught a vision of God, and when he saw God, his immediate response is, “Woe is me”. The answer, or the person here is Isaiah, when he saw God, he says, “Woe is me, for I am lost. I'm going to perish, for I am a man of unclean lips.” The first thing he is struck with when he caught a vision of God is not how great he is: “Wow is me.” There are some people today who say, “Yesterday I saw God and wow, I feel so shiok (Singlish for good). We had such a good conversation.” You will not have that response. You will be struck with your own sinfulness. That is what Isaiah had. He was struck with his own sinfulness, in particular his lips, probably with how he has lied or maybe spoken hypocritical things, or maybe the way he has not honoured God's name. He realised he is guilty. And God then sent a seraphim, an angel, who took a piece of coal from the altar. The altar is where animals are sacrificed, and God intends those animal sacrifices to be a picture of the ultimate sacrifice, who is Jesus on the cross. The altar is where the animals are slain, and the blood is spilled, and it drips down onto the coals of fire. And the seraphim takes one of that coal, probably soaked in that blood, and flies to Isaiah and touches the lips of Isaiah and said to him, “Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, Your sins are atoned for.” Now we know that the blood of animals cannot atone for our sins, but this is a prophetic picture of how Jesus and His sacrifice would cleanse His people from their sins.
 
So my friends, you and I cannot get to God on our own, but the Bible is telling us all from the beginning to the end, we are looking to Jesus. The law just condemns us, but the law also sends us to Jesus that we may trust in Him to be saved from our sins. Now, not only does God give us forgiveness as a result of what Jesus has done, God will also, for those who believe, give us a new heart. You see, this is what is promised in Deuteronomy. Yes, Deuteronomy has a lot about laws, but right at the end, this is how people can fulfill the law, not in their own strength, because their hearts are wicked and stony and evil, but when God bestows grace upon us through the finished work of His Son. God not only wipes away your sin, but He does a cardiac surgery. He circumcises your heart, and in the language of prophets later on, it's almost like God giving you a new heart. He takes away the heart of stone and replaces it with the heart of flesh, and He sends His spirit within you. That's what salvation is all about. Salvation is a divine miracle. It's not just you saying “yes” to Jesus, as if your words have power. It's God doing something amazing in your life, washing away your sins and giving you a new heart, making you a new creation. It's a divine miracle.
 
And when God does that, when you repent and believe in Jesus Christ, you now have a different heart. And because the engine is different, the fountain is different, the waters, the produce will be different. As Jesus said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” When you turn to Jesus, your heart is changed, and your speech will change, not overnight, but it will be more and more and more pronounced. After all, that's the work of the Spirit. No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed”, and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that causes us to acknowledge, submit, surrender and obey Jesus as our Lord.
 
Some of you will be hungry by now, and I show you a picture about a very famous man, a well-loved man. I loved him growing up. I try to avoid him nowadays, but Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, he said that his conversion to Christ cost him half his vocabulary, because he was a man who spilled profanities, cursing God and so on. But when he came to Christ, God changed his heart and God changed his speech. There is a story told about Welsh Revival miners, miners who worked during the days of Welsh Revival. After they got saved, and they go back to their mules, they ride on mules to get into the deep places. When they got back to their mules after salvation, after coming to know Christ, the mules cannot understand them anymore, because they used to give commands in profanities. Now they change, and the mules kelam kabut (Malay for confused), don't know what they are saying, but that's what salvation is. It changes us from the inside out. See, Christianity is not a set of rules for behaviour modification. It's not external. It's internal-external. It's from the inside out. It's a new creation. We're not telling you about some things you need to do, steps you need to take in order to make yourself “Christianese”. No, it's about coming to God and asking Him for a new heart, acknowledging you are a sinner, acknowledging you are doomed, acknowledging you cannot save yourself, but Jesus paid it all, and God can give you a new life. That's what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about.
 
So I think those are the purposes I'd like to highlight to you. It reveals our sinfulness, but the law cannot save us. But thankfully, the law also redirects us to Jesus who can save. And I tell you, Jesus is the only One who can save and today, it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I hope today, if you have sinned against God as a Christian, don't despair, because we do get... we do have this glorious promise that we can claim to ask for forgiveness and cleansing.
 
Practical Steps for Honouring God’s Name
Let me quickly send you on the pursuit of this law. So we looked at the negative prohibitions we had to avoid. But there are things now with a new heart, if you are… I am speaking to Christians now, if you have a new heart, you would want to do these things, and you should want to do these things, because it is not just avoiding the insult of God's name, but it's actively pursuing the honour of God's name, right? So what do we do in the light of this command? I think number one, we need to praise God. This is a joyful duty. It is a good thing for us to praise God. Many of you, like the videos show, we are like a church ninja. We just want to come in to hear the sermon. And once this… before even I say, “Amen”, you are already out. You don't want to sing. Well, if you are not a Christian, I understand, I understand. But if you are a Christian, I don't understand. The Bible tells us, “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendour of holiness. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt His name together, sing the glory of His name, give to Him glorious praise.” And Hebrews tells us to offer a sacrifice of praise. Every Sunday, I say it is time for offerings. But actually that's not quite accurate, because offerings are not just money and finance. Offerings include praise, include our whole life. So it is a joy and privilege for us to gather and sing unto God, ascribe to Him the glory that is due His name. We don't want to insult His name, but we want to praise His name. We want everyone gathered here to know He is worthy of our worship. So let's do it with gusto. Let's do it with passion. We are not a church well-known for singing somehow, I don't know why, but let's, let's get better there, not just to sing well, but to praise well, all right? To recognise God is worthy of our worship.
 
Number two, let us pray. Let us pray in... or let me put this again more clearly, let us pray for God's name, not pray for my name, not pray for my son's name. Pray for God's name, pray that His name will be set apart, because that is what He tells us, too. Jesus, when He taught his disciples how to pray, the first petition is, “Hallowed be Your name.” Very important is that “a”, ah. Not “hollowed be your name”. That will be horrible. “Hallowed be Your name” means let Your name be set apart to be adored and praised. So all that we pray must center on this goal. The goal is that God be glorified. I know I'm very radical. When people ask me, Do you pray for your son's exam? I say, “No”. I really don't, because I cannot see how my son's exam results would glorify God, since they have not yet come to Christ. Who will get the glory? Me, lah. Can I then reasonably pray it in my heart to God who sees my heart? No, I can't. I really can't. So I pray for them for salvation. Every time exam come, pray salvation. Pain come, salvation. Everything, salvation. Because until they are saved, they cannot glorify God in their lives.
 
So I say to you. Your prayer. People often ask, “Can you teach us how to pray?” I say the number one lesson you need to know in prayer is why you pray. If you want to pray because you seek the glory of God, I think you will know how to pray. But if your goal is anything apart from God's name, it's your name, no matter how articulate you are, you will pray wrongly. You ask amiss, you ask and receive, not because you ask amiss to consume it upon your own lust. Number one problem, can't get through. Jesus Christ Himself prayed, “Father, glorify Your name.”
 
Conclusion and Call to Action
Well, let me rush on. I think we need to not only say the right things, we need to live the right way, as we have looked at earlier. The way you treat your helper, your wife, your boss, your employees, your neighbour, the way you cheat, steal, lie, the way you look at finances, the way you behave, everything reflects upon God's name, because everywhere you go, you carry God's name. Let not the name of God be blasphemed amongst the Gentiles because of you.
 
And then finally, let us preach His name. There is no worthy name to preach except the name of Jesus Christ, who shows us the Father. Paul was an instrument of God to carry Jesus' name to the Gentiles, and today we carry God's name to the nations. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call upon the name of the Lord in whom they have not believed? How can they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear if we are not going there to preach? So let us preach God's name. What does it mean to fulfill the third commandment? I think, not just avoiding the prohibitions, but actively pursuing these things. So, do not have other gods. Love God and God alone. Do not misrepresent God, for He is worthy. And then live your lives for His name, for His glory.
 
Let's bow for a word of prayer. Father, thank You again for this morning. Thank You for Your word, and I pray again for souls to be saved, for saints to be built up, and may Your church bless Your name in all that we do. Thank You in Jesus' name. Amen.