Jehovah M'Kaddesh: God who Sanctifies You

“When a person becomes a Christian, he usually undergoes some radical life changes, especially if he has had an immoral background. Through the first steps of spiritual growth and self-denial, he gets rid of the large, obvious sins. But sad to say, many believers stop there. They don't go on to eliminate the little sins that clutter the landscape of their lives.

Gordon MacDonald, in his book Ordering Your Private World, told of an experience in his own life that illustrates this truth. "Some years ago, when Gail and I bought the old abandoned New Hampshire farm we now call Peace Ledge, we found the site where we wished to build our country home strewn with rocks and boulders. It was going to take a lot of hard work to clear it all out....The first phase of the clearing process was easy. The big boulders went fast. And when they were gone, we began to see that there were a lot of smaller rocks that had to go too. But when we had cleared the site of the boulders and the rocks, we noticed all of the stones and pebbles we had not seen before. This was much harder, more tedious work. But we stuck to it, and there came the day when the soil was ready for planting grass." -Our Daily Bread.

We see in the names of God a deliberate order and pattern, a progressive revelation, step by step God reveals who he is to us through the opening books of the Bible.

“Genesis, the book of beginnings, reveals the beginning of sin. It therefore also reveals the provision of redemption from sin under the name of God, Jehovah jireh, God will provide. Exodus, as the book of redemption… where Jehovah’s people were redeemed from bondage in Egypt. In exodus was also the revealed name of Jehovah-rophe, Jehovah who heals life’s wounds and sweeten’s it’s bitter experiences as signified by Israel’s experience at Marah. Then came the revelation of God as Jehovah-nissi at Rephidim, where Amalek, the enemy, opposed and fought against Israel, Jehovah the banner over his people in holy warfare…” -Nathan Stone, Names of God

After sin has occurred in our lives, then God redeems us, through faith, and also delivers us from bondage to sin, he delivers us from slavery, then he heals our wounds, and turns the bitter waters sweet, then he is our banner of victory as we fight the spiritual battles in life and take territories for God’s kingdom. And in all of this, then we see the book of Leviticus, all about holiness, and we see the next name of God in our series, Jehovah M’Kaddesh, which means God who sanctifies.

Though we sinned many times, God delivers us, redeems us, heals us, and is the banner over us, and in all of this God begins to sanctify us, to make us more and more like Jesus.

In the book of Leviticus chapter 20, it says, “‘Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the Lord, who makes you holy.” -Leviticus 20:7-8

The name of God: Jehovah m’Kaddesh which means The Lord who sanctifies you.

The book of Leviticus lays out the ways in a which a redeemed people ought to live as a result of what God has done in them, in the most pure and holy way, fearing God, loving God, and obeying God’s ways in all things.

God is so many things to us,

Elohim, God our creator

Jehovah, God our Lord

El-Shaddai, God Almighty

Adonai, God our master

Jehovah-jireh, God who provides

Jehovah-rophe God who heals

Jehovah-nissi, God our banner

Now, Jehovah M’ Kaddesh, God who sanctifies.

God provides salvation for us through Jesus Christ. God provides healing to us as well. God’s banner is over us as we Christians fight our battles. Now God also sanctifies us.

The sin problem is the single greatest problem, the problem of rebellion, the problem of wickedness. Jesus pays off our sin debt. Now, as we journey along the path of life, we learn not to sin. The Holy Spirit is our teacher in that. God sanctifies us.

He sets us apart from the world and slowly makes us ready for paradise. That is the journey we are on now. We are learning holy love as a lifestyle instead of selfish sin. We are learning to ignore the flesh and live by the Spirit’s leading. We are learning to be all God has called us to be in Jesus.

We are like Israel in the wilderness on our way to the promised land. Our promised land is the New Jerusalem. And we want to persevere on the journey. And always be reminded that the generation that escaped Egypt rebelled against God in the wilderness and they died in the wilderness, aside from Joshua and Caleb. It’s a good reminder, to avoid sin like the plague on this journey. We too can die in the wilderness if we reject the leading of the Holy Spirit, as the Israelites rejected the leading of Moses, and worshiped the golden calf.

It's amazing how we try to test God in this area, and say well Jesus paid my sin debt so I can sin as much as I want now. The whole point of all that was for Jesus to pay it off, so you would respond by repenting, putting your faith in Him, and by submitting to the Holy Spirit’s leading, you no longer live as a slave to sin. You live free, sanctified, holy, pure and so you are now ready for paradise. Today you may be living a lifestyle of secret sin, and I want to warn you, you won’t get into heaven living that way. Repent, give it over to Jesus, ask his forgiveness, and he will forgive you anew, and guide you to safety in Himself.

What golden calf needs to be burned out of your life? Our God is a consuming fire. He will deliver you from any sin or addiction. Ask Him for help. But be aware, he is God who sanctifies you. Submit to that sanctification. Learn from the trials and tests. He loves you. He will guide you home safely if you submit to Him in all things.

The Parable of the Two Sons & the Pharisee and Publican: The Power of Humility, The Danger of Pride

I had learned about God when I was 7, 8, 9 years old, into my teens, but as my life became increasingly broken I rejected God, and went my own way in anger and pride.

In my mind, I recall, I said to myself, we don’t need you God. We’re going to make this planet into a paradise on our own and show God that we don’t need him. We’re going to create utopia ourselves. We’re going to show God’s whose really boss. That is the spirit of the world, right there, the spirit at work in the sons and daughters of rebellion.

And so I began my descent down a dark hill. One by one everything was stripped away from me, thanks be to God for that, my ego was as big as a house, and piece by piece, chunk by chunk he chipped it away, but even near rock bottom, total lostness, I would rather die than turn to God, and I even attempted suicide. That’s the height of what you’d call “reprobate” one abandoned to their own sins and disaster. They’d rather die than turn to God.

And yet, that was 2009, 2010 2011, then 2012, a few year later, finally, there was no more ego left, every piece, every sliver was chipped away, and God guided me toward his son Jesus Christ, and all heaven waited in silence, as I made my choice, would I cry out or not, and I did cry out, to Jesus Christ for salvation. And then everything changed.

My ego removed, replaced with light with a soft beating heart of growing love. The Lord lovingly sent me out to work in his vineyard fields. Head out to work my child, and do my will, and I will be with you.

Which brings us to our parable today, our first parable, as we will look at two today.

It’s from Matthew 21, the same chapter, Jesus’ triumphal entry. So we understand the context. He’s speaking to the leaders, the masses, in Jerusalem, in the temple, and he says this, scandalously, he says…

28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” -Matthew 21:28-32

Today Jesus might say to us, "Truly I tell you, the poor masses of India, and China, the witchdoctors and shaman of the African nations are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you Americans. For the message of the gospel came to you through countless teachers, and preachers and evangelists, and mounds of bibles reaching to the sky and even after you saw all this, you did not repent and believe."

Jesus is contrasting in this parable, two different types of people, responding to the statement from the Dad, he says, go work in my vineyard.

Son 1 says no I’m not going.

Son 2 says yes I’ll go.

Words don’t matter much here. It doesn’t matter what they say. It’s what they do that matters.

Son 1 later changes his mind and goes in.

Son 2 lied, and never went to work in the vineyard.

Jesus gives this parable to illustrate a simple point, the accredited, the powerful, the wealthy, the affluential, the esteemed, are missing the kingdom of God because of their pride.

And the lowly, the miserable, the addicted, the prostitutes, the corrupt tax collectors, they are entering the kingdom of God, though they went into sin at first, later they changed their mind and gave their lives to God and got to work in his vineyard fields.

So this was a message that Jesus gave to rebuke the scribes, Pharisees and religious leaders of his time who rejected the message of John the Baptist. If you recall John the Baptist was one who prepared the way for Jesus’ coming, calling people to a baptism of repentance from sins, getting them ready, for the coming messiah.

Jesus contrasts many of the common people who viewed John the Baptist as a true prophet of God, and embraced his message of repentance, which made them ready for the coming of Christ, and those religious scholars and Pharisees and I’m sure other common people as well who rejected John the Baptist and as well were in the process of rejecting Jesus’ message as well.

They had learned so well to follow the law of Moses. Yet despite having the entire Torah memorized, and the prophets, and the psalms and proverbs, which all point to the coming of Jesus, their pride blinded them to the truth.

Just as I was once blind to the truth. And just as many are now blind to the truth in our world today.

So this spoke directly to what they were thinking about Jesus.

Have you ever had someone not like you because of a misunderstanding and you knew that if they could get over that misunderstanding that you could have a good relationship with them? But then realized that they just can’t get past it. They won’t listen. Maybe that’s kind of how Jesus felt, he knew he could save them, but they just couldn’t get past the law of Moses. They couldn’t see beyond it to the coming of Jesus. And it cost them everything.

So since we are not Jews under the Torah, but are New Testament believers in Jesus, what can we take this from this parable today?

We can stay humble to what God is doing in our lives. And stay humble for God to correct us on our theology, our understanding of Him, on how we love people, on maybe a sin that’s in our lives that he’s convicting us about, but maybe we’re ignoring or resisting that leading from God.

It’s been on my heart lately, so many Christians in the world today have messed up theology. Many, many, many Christians I know who are otherwise very doctrinally sound don’t believe in spiritual gifts, or the five fold ministry, they say certain things have ended, they disallow the Holy Spirit’s guidance and leading, and reject certain gifts they think have ceased. Certain Christians are very focused on Mary, and the eucharist, and statues and candles, and I feel like they're missing things about God. Certain people just operate in a sort of dead religion. Others teach once saved always saved, a doctrine that can lead people to complacency and sin. Some even teach gay marriage is affirmed by scripture. Some teach Jesus isn’t really God. It’s just crazy.

We have to be so careful with how we understand who God is. Always keep scripture first. Sometimes we get caught up in these man made systems, Arminianism vs. Calvinism and we forget to keep the scripture first, and instead we make scripture secondary to our theology. Never do that. Always keep scripture first, don’t try to force God into a box. And then we can get puffed up about theology too, and get arrogant about it. Watch out for that. Stay humble. Stay hungry for the raw truth about who God is, and let your preconceptions about what you think God is be overruled time and again by new things you hadn’t seen in the scriptures before, whether it be his deep love or his severe wrath or his justice or his mercy or his forgiveness or his grace or his anger or his divine beauty.

Stay humble, don’t miss something God is doing because you’re caught up in man made systems or old ideas not based on the word of God, or worse ideas based on cherry picked verses that exclude other verses, some only take the harsh verses and make an idol of God as a cruel task master, more so today some make an idol of God who is all love and no justice, who is all mercy and no wrath, and they pervert God’s character just as much as the cruel task master version.

Stay humble, stay teachable, and let God interrupt your easy picture of who He is. God has done that for me time and again and I haven’t always liked it, but he forces me to reconsider and reconsider who He is, and He is always taking me beyond what I thought even a month or a year ago. It’s wild, and a bit unnerving, but it’s His will, and His character, I’ve got to embrace that journey. But also, make sure that journey doesn’t lead you away from God’s word. God is not going to contradict His word. That’s how cults and apostasy start, is someone changes what God’s word says to fit modern times or their own ideas.

Stay humble, stay teachable. /

Similarly, our second parable today, from Luke 18:9-14 has a similar message. It says, “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.””

I want you to understand that the Pharisees were not monsters. In fact many of the leaders of the people and some of the Pharisees believed in Jesus, says so in John 12:42, but they were afraid to tell anyone, because they feared being expelled from the synagogue.

These were people who saw the disastrous history of Israel, the repeating cycle of following God and then the next generation fell away from God, and then the kingdom splitting, the civil war, then Assyria taking Israel into captivity, and Babylon taking Judah into captivity. They were desperate to do the right thing, they were so desperate to fix the nation they became legalistic. And made man-made doctrines to sort of fill in where they thought God had missed something. Sounds a lot like theologies of today, always trying to fill in what God said.

In all of that devotion and study, they faced the danger of pride, and many fell to it, so the Pharisee is praying and saying to God, look at me, look how great I am, and he judges people around him, and says wow God thank you that I’m not like these terrible people. I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of my income, I tithe.

They were getting the external things right, fasting and praying and tithing and serving God, memorizing scripture, wearing the proper attire, and so on, but they had lost God himself in all the rules and regulations. They had become self focused and it had become about them. Pride had slowly done it’s work in them.

Pride is probably our greatest danger as Christians. I certainly think so. It’s a deadly poison, and the solution to it is humility. Humility is beautiful and pleasing to God.

See the tax collectors, standing far off, refusing to look to heaven, he was repentant, beating his chest, upset with himself for his wicked ways, and he cries out for mercy from God. And he left the temple that day justified before God. The Pharisee left poisoned and arrogant.

Thankfully for us as Christians we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. And when we begin to get prideful, which is a chief danger as wealthy Americans, the Holy Spirit begins to convict us, and humbles us, sometimes by making us look stupid. Believe me, so many times in my life, the Lord has humbled me, by having someone rebuke me, or I end up saying something foolish and prideful and people look at me like I’m being ridiculous. Have you ever experienced that? It’s not fun. But it’s a gift in disguise because it’s humbling us. Hopefully we can learn then over time to humble ourselves, so that we don’t have to endure the embarrassment and shame of being humbled by God himself. But take it as a gift if you are, because it means you were on a bad road. Then again, we can also resist and rejecting the Holy Spirit’s leading. I’ve seen that as well.

There was a famous missionary, someone that I had read his books, and really loved this dream he had of the gospel and the continent of Asia, and a bridge showed before to a ripe harvest. But over the years it all began to change, instead of empowering missionaries, it became one big megachurch sort of thing. Several pastors went to this man to correct him about the way he was setting things up, and his pride, and the gathering of money under one core power instead of the original way he had set it up for missionaries to be supported and to plant churches that would be independent of a central authority, in any case, when they went to him to correct him several times, he simply said to them, “once you have the money, you have the power.”

So guard against that sort of pride in your life. Always stay humble. We are servants of God. Keep that servant attitude, and you will be like the worker, who maybe didn’t want to go right away, but later went into the harvest field to work, and like the publican, though he had sinned and cheated people of their tax money, he went before God humbly, and sought forgiveness and he received it.

I think back to when I was blinded by the pride of life and the spirit of this world, we’ll make our own utopia, we don’t need you God and we’ll show you that we can do it without you, what foolishness! The pride of life can blind us to the truth, yet thankfully, God often humbles us, and brings us low, and the ego is gone, and thankfully once that ego is gone, we’re willing to listen and embrace who God really is, in all His beautiful and terrifying glory. Keep that humble mindset of the heart, and you will walk steadfastly and firmly as a Christian servant in a world full of pride and self-exalting puffed up worldliness. Humble pie tastes pretty gross, like eating crow, it isn’t necessarily fun to keep humble and meek and serving others as God’s servant and giving God all the glory, but the payoff is beyond imagining. Eternal life, in perpetual joy and peace, in a real utopia, a permanent city, the New Jerusalem, a perfect city, with no sin, made by God himself, just us as His people to dwell in. That’s something special and worth some humble pie.

You are in Great Danger Right Now

It's kind of scary when you realize what's really real.  The Bible... it's all true. As I sit on the porch at 11pm, staring out across the road into the darkness, I realize it's really real. And it scares me. Because if it's really true... then every human here is in great danger. If they don't receive Christ as savior before they die, they will be placed in a disturbing nightmare reality called hell. This nightmare reality is permanent, eternal. They will live forever in a place of endless sorrows and torment. Humanity is in great danger and needs Jesus so very badly. 

We often wrestle with the moral questions of heaven, hell and evil. We wrestle with what that means about who God is. But let's table that for now.

On a practical basis if it's true, and it certainly appears to be just that, then, it doesn't really matter if we fully understand why it's that way. The plain fact is that it is that way. So we need to discover how to deal with this reality, more so than wrestle with understanding the implications. 

Staring into the darkness of the night, praying and talking to God, looking with my eyes, at the light from the neighbors porch reflecting onto the trees along the road, and the sound of the bubbling water fountain from my other neighbors yard, the bats flying around, the raccoons that quietly cross the road night by night, the stars in the sky, and it's all plainly clear, this is certainly a finely tuned reality made by an intelligent designer, how I didn't see this plainly obvious fact for so many years is absolutely astonishing to me. it's so obvious it should be considered self-evident. We have to create vast play realities like evolution and time + matter + chance to try to somehow explain away the insane complexity of life with big numbers and billions and billions and blah blah blah. 

Yet simply looking at the vast complexity, the language of DNA, the unified systems of life, gravity, Higgs-boson particles, animal life, food, water, all of it, screams design! How could I never see that before? Was I blind? Perhaps so. Spiritually blind. But now I see.

So, what should I do with all this? Dare I face it? Can I? It's a bleak scenario. I feel like Neo after waking up on the hovership, looking at the bleak situation of the few survivors of humanity and thinking, what on Earth can I even do? 

Or I sit back and ask myself the question: What even am I? 

I know what I've been told by modernism as taught in our public schools and universities. I know all that garbage. But apparently I'm not just a consumer or a bag of flesh, I'm something else. 

Since all that garbage is man mind ideology and false, what am I actually? What does the Bible say that I am?

I'm made in God's image. I'm of infinite value. Yet also, if I cling to sin, God has no qualms about setting me in a place of nightmares, forever, where I will be consciously tormented for all time, beyond all time, into infinity. I'm loved by God. But sin must be destroyed in me. Sin must be removed from me. I must be made new. Or else all is lost. All is more lost than I can possibly imagine indeed, because, death is not the end, and in hell, one cannot die, but will live forever in ever increasing pain and sorrow. What a terrible fate! 

Could one imagine something worse if they were to consider the question of what is the worst case scenario? I don't think so. It is the worst possible fate. 

And most people, as far as I can tell, do go there. I would guess about 99% of all humans born go to hell. I hope I'm wrong about that number. Maybe it's worse than that though, maybe it's 99.9% one in one thousand sounds more likely than one in one hundred. But then again maybe that's not necessary, if we would just spread the gospel and follow Jesus, perhaps everyone would turn to Him and follow Him. 

It's amazing the hysteria that Covid-19 caused, when it had a 99.9% survival rate. What about the pandemic of sin upon humanity? Most die of it without repenting and putting their faith in Christ. Maybe we should get more hysterical about that. 

But hysteria won't solve anything. Instead, faith is the answer. Strong faith and stronger love. As well as a healthy amount of fear for God. You, Christian, are also in danger, if you give sin a foothold, and live in willful sin, you will also be sent to hell. I fear many Christians think they are going to heaven, but when they die, they are sent to hell, because they lived in sin and never repented. But there is great hope. Because you can repent, and cry out to Jesus and he will help you and free you from every sin. He will break every chain in your life. But please do repent daily. Keep seeking the Lord. Make sure no sin lives in your life. Honor God first, and you will receive eternal life in paradise with Jesus the savior of the world. 

If you don't have Jesus as your savior, please give your life to Him right now. Repent (turn away) from your sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ for your salvation. He paid off your sin debt on the cross, where he died in your place, received the punishment you deserved, and if you cry out to Him he will not turn you away. He will take away your sins, give you His righteousness, and you will be born again. You'll receive the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of your salvation and begin your pilgrimage home to paradise. You'll be given all you need in Christ to put sin to death in your life, and live holy as God is holy. Join a body of believers locally. Study the word of God, and put it into practice in your life. Love God and his people, serve others. And you can enjoy paradise in a new city, a city called the New Jerusalem, a perfect reality, a timeless eternal life of joy, peace, creativity, community, art, worship, music, books, and new journeys we can hardly imagine. Cry out to Jesus today. If you don't, you'll regret it more than you can possibly imagine. I don't say that to scare you, just to simply tell you the unvarnished truth about the reality we exist in. 

It's very difficult to grapple with these truths. I don't think I can face it, not fully. I don't hold on too strongly to the realization about the fate of humanity. It's just too grim to possibly handle. I simply have to focus on sharing the message with those who are in my realm of influence. God help us. We are in great danger. But if we walk in faith with God, in love, and boldly, being led by the Holy Spirit, God will lead us safely to the gates of the eternal city. 

There is so much lukewarm Christianity in the world. So much once saved always saved. So much compromise in the body of believers. There is so much cherry-picking of the scriptures, and repeating of the feel good verses. Well the Bible is more than feel good verses. It's the flawless word of God. We must never twist it by only preaching and teaching on the feel good verses. Teach the whole truth, the whole word, even the difficult scriptures, even the scriptures about heaven and hell. Even the teachings about holiness. We need the full picture of who God is, even if it offends our modern sensibilities.

God be with you. Grace and peace be with you in Jesus Christ. Stand firm, the time is near. Amen. 

Names of God: Jehovah-nissi, God our Banner on the Battlefields of Life

Israel had escaped slavery in Egypt. An entire nation now traveling through the wilderness to their new home. They were led by God himself, working through Moses. It was a difficult journey. And God was observing their every move to see how they would respond to the tests and challenges he gave to them.

God was building them in the wilderness, teaching them to go from being slaves to being the chosen people of God. He was preparing them for the promised land.

Yet we saw how the Israelites cried out against Moses when they found an oasis but the waters of the oasis were bitter. Yet God turned the bitter waters pure, and God became the healer of the people, Jehovah rophe.

The journey continued after the oasis of marah, and the people were hungry, so God provided bread from heaven for them to eat. And then it happened again, the came to a place and there was no water there. There weren’t even bitter waters.

It was just a desert.

But how often does this happen in our own lives? God tests us. We fail the test. But we learn after what we should’ve done. Can you think of a time in your life when God was testing you and you failed to trust Him? You tossed and turned in unbelief. I’ve been there too.

And often times, what happens, as we continue beyond that failure, the test comes up again. Anyone notice repeating patterns in your life? Maybe you keep dating guys who are bad for you. Maybe you keep struggling with overeating and gaining weight and losing gaining and losing. Maybe you keep getting jobs then losing them. Maybe you keep trying to quit drinking or quit smoking, and you keep slipping back.

There are numerous other examples it doesn’t have to be as stereotypical as drugs or drink or relationships or jobs, it can something smaller in your life. Or something larger. Or it can be waiting, and waiting, and waiting…

In all these situations we have to do what, make a change in our lives, and maybe we don’t. We keep doing the same thing expecting different results. This can be a form of faithlessness, where we’re rebelling against god and refusing to make the changes he keeps urging us to make.

But in this case it’s more like the waiting scenario we talked about. As you wait on the Lord, one of the chief things we do as Christians, we wait, every single faithful believer from Abraham to the Apostle Paul had to wait. And its our burden as well. When we wait, we wait in faith, one week, one month, several months, and more, and during these months and years, as we wait, we experience times when we are tempted to doubt if God is really there, or if he’s really going to answer. We’re also tempted to question his character and even get angry and rebel against God.

This is huge. What we do in those quiet moments will define our journey as Christians just as much as how we love people and help people. For me it’s weekends, or Friday nights, or Monday mornings, or maybe after work, I’m home by myself and the mind starts going.

In those moments, hear me church, in those moments, decide to stay in faith. Decide to fight those thoughts. It’s ok to feel sad. It’s ok to grieve. But keep trusting God. Keep praising Him.

Something Chelsey told me which I think is very wise, in those moments when we’re entering that temptation to question God, turn on praise music and just sing, listen and sing along enter worship, and there’s nothing the enemy can do then.

This probably isn’t going to happen when you’re at church it happens when you’re alone and thinking.

How will you respond? Let’s see how Israel responded.

From Exodus 17:1-7 “The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

God was testing them, but they ended up testing God’s patience. They complained and grew angry and even questioned, “Is God really even with us at all?”

We are shocked at how they respond but how often do we respond to our situation that won’t change by saying to ourselves or thinking to ourselves, “Is the Lord really with me or not?”

I wonder sometimes when I see my book in heaven that recorded everything I did in my life, will it say, there on page 3,562, there Justin tested the Lord by not believing the promises God had made to Him.

Ouch. What about your book? What is it going to say on judgment day? Will it say there they departed the body of believers and never returned. There they disbelieved God and rejected Him. There they doubted God and rebelled against Him. Or will it say there they believed God and loved Jesus. There they persevered in the battle. Despite all the troubles they kept believing God. I want mine to say that.

So despite the Israelites failing their re-test of the waters of marah, God continues to help them and feed them.

But an even greater test was upon the Israelites soon after. It says in Exodus 17:8-9: The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. 9 Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

10 So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. 11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. 12 When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. 13 So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.”

15 Moses built an altar and called it The Lord is my Banner. 16 He said, “Because hands were lifted up against[c] the throne of the Lord,[d] the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

After this great victory, Moses constructed an altar, and he called the altar, “The Lord is my Banner” the name of God, Jehovah-nissi.

What does that mean, that God was his banner? And how is God our banner today? Well, what is a banner? A banner is something like a flag, or a standard. Around our community you would see American flags, it’s a declaration of values, a celebration of beliefs. We have a salvation army banner, the salvation army flag, which references blood and fire, blood of Jesus, fire of the Holy Spirit, it has meaning. The American flag references the 50 stars of the fifty states of the country and the 13 red and white stripes to signify the blood and sacrifice of the original 13 colonies that broke away from great Britain.

For us, the Lord is our banner. The same was true for Moses. What was happening on the battlefield? Joshua led the battle against the Amalekites. But who was granting them the victory? It was God, symbolized by Moses lifting the staff over the battlefield.

We should always remember that in any situation we’re in, whether at this church, building this church, inviting new people, working our jobs, fighting political and social battles, that we should recognize our victory does not come from our own efforts, it comes from God who is the banner which unites our forces in spiritual combat.

But, Joshua and the Israelites had to do the footwork, they had to go out and engage in the battle. It’s true sometimes God will say stand still and watch me work, don’t even do anything. But other times God will say get to work, and I will be with you, and grant you the strength you need, and the victory in the end.

Jehovah nissi, God is my banner. He is the banner over my battlefield. He is the one who grants the victory. I can’t do it alone. He is the one who unites all of us as well, as we fight to win the world for Jesus. He is our banner. During this test, the Israelites succeeded, and defeated the Amalekites, not because they were stronger, they weren’t, they were former slaves turned soldiers, brand new at this, never the less God’s standard was over their army, and they won the day. Remember that in your own life, God’s banner, his flag waves over you, over us, as we fight for Him. God bless you today.