What's in a Word?

Ex. 3:13-15-   Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Ex. 6:2-6-   God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.

2Tim. 2:14-18-   Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some.

God's Love of Words...

God cares much about words.  It is by the Word of God that the universe came into being.  Jesus Christ is the very Word of God come in the flesh to reveal the Godhead.  The Bible is the written Word of God that, in the hands of the Spirit, is able to make us "competent" for living with Christ in godliness as we were created to do (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  The Exodus passages above show how God places a premium on using the right words to describe who He is to His people.  To use the wrong words to describe God is ultimately to be less than fully truthful about Him, and so His people are robbed of certainty and assurance and hope in the precious promises of redemption.  Words matter- they either rightly or wrongly show us God and what it means to know and enjoy Him.

This is why Paul gives the instructions he does to Timothy that we read above.   Paul does not want the words of God quarrelled over, but understood and embraced by faith!  Timothy is told to be a faithful worker who "cuts a path in a straight direction" (literal meaning of "rightly handling the word of truth").  He is to make plain and clear the meaning of God's Word and to allow for no "irreverent babble" that causes people to miss the meaning of God's Word and so miss out on God's desire for God for His people through His Word.

So What??

OK, that's nice Eric, thanks for that exegetical nugget- NOW WHAT!?!  Well, actually, a lot.  For instance...

1. It means that emptying our worship of the Word of God is a major mistake.  God's Word, the Bible, must saturate both our public and private times of worship for God intends to not only communicate with us through it, but actually bless and transform us through that Word.   
2. It means that emptying our conversation of Biblical & theological words is also a major mistake.  Yes, we must not merely use such words without explanation, but we must also not simply avoid them.  There is undeniably a language to our faith that God wants us to use and it is through such use that we find "straight direction" to a deeper fellowship with God than we've known otherwise.
3. It means that we should find ways to become familiar with the great confessions of our faith- cf. Apostle's Creed, Nicene Creed, The Westminster Confession and Catechisms.  All of these have paid very careful attention to "cutting a straight path" through words that carefully express the truth of God in Christ.  We should learn much from them about the Word and words of God.
4. it means we must work to understand the language of our faith so that we will both be reshaped by that language and be able to have discernment to know what is "irreverent babble" being passed off as Christian teaching.
5. Maturity and depth in our relationship with Christ is tied to our learning and leaning by faith on the words of God that communicate the truth of God and how He loves us and leads us.  No, someone doesn't need to become a professional theologian to know Jesus- Child-like faith will do (cf. Lk. 18:15-17)!  But that child-like faith that should never change is intended by God to steadily feed on more and more of the Word and words of God:

Heb. 5:11-6:1-   About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. 1   Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity,

What Now?

So lets learn a new language together- the language of THE faith!  Let's be ready to work at understanding the words in the Bible or Christian theology that are difficult or unusual.  Let's learn to feed on Christ through them with child-like faith.  You may want to get a hold of some books to help you get started in understanding this new language.  Consider geting a hold of Marva Dawn's Talking the Walk: Letting Christian Language Live Again.  Learning any language is hard.  But the payoff is immense in this case.  Why?  Because God cares much about words, and it is through words that He cares much for us.