Strong Tower (Pastor Vann Trapp)

Amen.

Good morning.

That was fun.

I love that.

I love this service.

This morning because we we started out with baptism.

We get to end with communion kind of bookends.

Some really great stuff.

All of it looks kind of where we came from.

All of it looks forward to where we're going.

And I don't know about you guys, but I am looking forward to a world

where gifts like this don't come around.

And I mean the way that God describes

it, where every tear is wiped away from our eyes.

Where there's no sickness or sorrow, no no death, no sin, no brokenness, no

broken relationships, no, no awkward, you know,

Christmases that you have to go through because you're not quite sure

where you stand with your family at times.

And. Right.

I mean, it's going to be a place where everything is as it should be.

Everything is as God intended it to be, and I'm looking forward to that.

And it's good to be able to gather with God's people regularly,

to just remember that and to be reminded that that we're not.

Our is not here.

Our hope is not here. Amen.

Our hope is in the Kingdom.

Our hope is in when that day when Jesus comes back and takes us as his own.

Amen.

Happy New Year!

Hope you guys had a great Christmas!

We got to spend some time with our our kids and our grandkids.

We have four grandsons

that our daughter, our daughter and son in law have in Wisconsin.

And, so one of them came in sick.

You know, when we first got there.

But the time we left, everybody else was sick and they were fine.

Right? So

so we kind of got over that and we're just kind of digging our way out of that now.

But, so I will try my best,

you know, to pass on to you what I feel like God has given to us.

Originally we were we were going to be looking

at a multi-week series about this idea of prayer and God's name.

It was going to be called The Strong Tower because in Proverbs 1810

it says, the name of the Lord is a strong tower.

The righteous run into it and they are safe.

Amen.

But the question is, what does it mean to run into the Tower of God's name?

What is that?

How do you even do that?

How is a tower? Is a name a tower?

How do you run into it?

That's what we're going to look into.

However, it's not going to be a multi-week series anymore.

We've decided to put it all in today. Right.

So get comfortable.

We're going to get eight weeks worth today.

I'm just kidding.

But if I go along, you'll know why.

I'm just kidding.

Again.

You know, today what we're going to look at is

instead of trying to cover the whole, the whole topic.

But I hope we can do is to get at least

a good introduction into this idea of what it means

that prayer, in God's name, can be a place

and a practice by which we come to know God deeply,

by which we come to know God very personally,

and by which we also come to know how God interacts with our very real lives

are very real challenges that we face, those trials that we we enter into.

And he says that his name can be that strong tower in our lives.

Amen.

So you guys ready?

I promise. Yo.

What's that?

All set?

Okay, we got the front row ready.

I like these guys down here, by the way.

You know, some of you guys might be trying this every once in a while.

It's really encouraging to have front couple of rows.

Let's pray.

Father, we want

to thank you, for the grace that you show in our lives.

We want to thank you for the promise of Jesus Christ

and the promise that he brings to us,

the promise that he brings us of a coming kingdom,

that we are in this world, but we're not of this world,

that we are now citizens of a new creation that is breaking through

and is breaking through in us.

And so we see.

We see, even if dimly,

even a reflection of a bad mirror.

We see those things that are to come

and we see them in our own lives.

We see them in the lives around us, and we see them in the way that you work

in us and through us.

And so,

father, we pray that you would be doing that work in us and through us today.

We want to give you the our attention.

We ask that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts

to understand what you're speaking, what you're showing, so that we might turn

and turn in the direction you ask us to turn, that we might turn to you.

And we might find that life,

that life that you gave your life so that we might have.

So, father, let your spirit be poured out in this place.

Let him

be shaping our hearts and our lives.

Be shaping us with your word,

with your promises, with that grace that you have promised.

So be here.

Make us more like Jesus.

Make us more like those people who have made us to be.

Paul put it.

He said that we might grab hold of lay hold of that, for by

God we may lay hold of that for which we were laid

hold of by Christ.

So we ask that you would do that this morning,

that you would help us to do that this morning, that we might know

you and learn what it means to run to you, as our strong tower

is, in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

So what's going on here, by the way?

I have a little bit of hot, a little bit cold.

I'm going to see what works.

That is good.

All right.

So I don't know if you guys have ever had this experience.

I know that I have.

There are times in my life where unexpected changes take place.

Right.

Sometimes it's due to your own decisions.

Sometimes it's because the decisions of others.

But it happens to all of us, doesn't it?

Sometimes those changes are good.

Sometimes those changes don't seem so good.

They don't seem so welcome at the time.

But the question is, when those changes happen, what do we do?

Right?

Because Jesus said, you know,

if there's one thing that we can be guaranteed of, John 1633, in this world

you're going to have changes, troubles

and tribulations and tests and trials, and you're going to have.

And so, what do we do when they show up?

Because they're going to show up.

So in Proverbs 1810, it talks about it says, tells us that in those times

the righteous and who are the righteous, the righteous are those

who do things the right way, according to God's way.

They approach these things, they go okay, and they head off in the right direction.

The righteous during these times, they run to this thing called the

strong tower of God's name,

and that they find safety.

On the other hand, Proverbs 1811, which is the verse

that just follows, that one, it says that it gives an example

of how other people might decide to approach this.

And it says the rich man.

His wealth is his strong city, is his strong tower,

and he imagines it to be like a high wall that will protect him.

Then it brings these two thoughts together

in the final verse, Proverbs 1812, and it says,

but destruction follows when a person's heart is proud.

Like that.

But humility goes before

honor before being lifted up.

So we can trust in things like wealth.

We can try and trust in things like our status, or our name,

or popularity, or the group of friends, or the

the things that we set up for ourselves or our plans.

We can trust in those things, but

I don't know how many of you guys have experienced this.

It seems like in times of testing, those things seem to become very crumbly,

don't they? Right.

I mean, listen,

your finances evaporate far faster than you thought they would have.

You thought I was prepared for this.

And I'll send your finances going now.

We're going to go, right?

Or else I'll send you find out that,

power, you know, you thought you were in the right alignment with power.

And also in the shifts you go, where did it go?

It was unexpected or else popularity.

I mean, popularity ends up being like a mirage.

You thought it was there, and then it's gone.

Our pride in those things, it amplifies.

It exaggerates for us.

It makes us think that they have the ability to be a tower for us.

That will help us in these times of trials, times of safety.

It will be a place of safety in these times of struggle.

But Proverbs says, no

pride, pride in those things.

You know, first, John, it talks about the pride of life.

And life doesn't mean just being alive.

It means the things that we have in life, taking pride

in those things that we do for ourselves.

Since pride goes before destruction, before crash.

But it says somehow this humble trust in the name

by which God has made himself known,

trust in

who he is,

will be more than enough to get us through, will be more than enough

to get us through all the challenges and all the the transitions

in those tough times, those things when unexpected changes take place.

So we say, well, what does that mean then?

What does that mean?

Over the years here.

I have it's a weird sound, isn't it?

He has to do that every time I take a trip.

Over the years here, I've been talking to you guys about the name of God.

The name by which he reveals himself, the name Yahweh.

It's his personal name.

And we just going through a series in the fall where God

said, you know, I didn't make this name known to everybody.

I didn't make it known to Abraham.

I didn't make it known to Isaac.

I didn't make it known to Jacob.

But I've made it known to you.

I want you to know who I am.

And he said,

I am the Lord.

And that that word, Lord, when it's all capitalized in

some of your translations, the Lord is his name.

It's his name, Yahweh.

And he considered it so, so sacred that you don't even say it.

So they replaced it with the name Lord.

So do something like capitalize the whole thing

so that you know this is his name.

But he said, I want you to know my name.

And then over the

years, I've also told you regularly how that eight times in Scripture, that name,

that name Yahweh, was attached to another title.

It was another title,

that God wanted to kind of link with his name.

And it was attached by this, this Hebrew.

It's kind of like a hyphen in Hebrew.

And, those names are this.

He said, I am Yahweh Roe, which is found in Psalm 23 one.

It means the Lord, my shepherd.

He said, I am Yahweh.

Rapha, which is Exodus 1526.

The Lord who heals,

I am Yahweh, said Kinu from Jeremiah 23 six

the Lord is our righteousness,

and the Yahweh.

MCAT Kadesh.

From Leviticus 20, verse eight,

the Lord who sets us apart as being his own.

Yahweh Nissi from Exodus 1715.

The Lord my banner, my joy, my strength.

Yahweh. Hera.

Some of you guys have heard this one.

It's Genesis 2214,

not just the Lord will provide,

but the Lord who sees

and will provide what he sees

before we even know that we have the need of it.

Amen.

Yahweh Shalom from judges

624 the Lord who is our peace, Yahweh.

Shammah.

From Ezekiel 4835.

The Lord who is right here, who is present now?

With some of those names,

their names that we very much would like to run into, right?

When we're sick, we want to we want to say, God, I need you to be my healer.

We want to run into that tower, don't we?

When we're when we're lonely, we want God.

I want you to be here when we're in worship.

We're like God.

I want to experience you as a God who is present

when we.

When we need something, we're like, God, I need you to be my provider.

So there are aspects of this name that we say,

you know, we very much want it to be our tower

and that and that is

that's what it means to run into the tower of his name,

to recognize who he is, to say, God, be

that here now.

Jesus put it in this way

in Matthew six verse nine.

I'm sorry, I'm sounding bad, aren't I?

Sorry about this, guys.

It wasn't this bad yesterday.

It's.

It's you guys.

It's your fault.

Matthew six

Jesus is teaching his disciples.

His disciples have come up.

They said, teach us how to pray.

He says, we'll pray in this way.

And what does he start out with?

Says, praying this way.

Our father who art in heaven,

let your name be hallowed.

Let your name be set apart.

Let your name be lifted up.

Let your name become the focus here.

Right?

And that's what running into the tower is.

Praying God, let your name be seen.

Not the name of the sickness, right?

Let your name be seen not by unrighteousness,

but you as my righteousness.

God, let your name be seen.

You present, not me alone.

That's what praying in so

and so Jesus said, start praying.

Start your prayer by running into this tower of God's strong name.

That's the type of prayer

we wanted to kind of take several weeks to look at.

And I want to encourage you guys take the next several

weeks, in fact, make practice not just for the next weeks,

but the next months, next years of your life.

Learn what it means to run into this strong tower.

Take those eight names that God has given to us.

Just those eight.

I mean, he has dozens of names.

You can take any of them,

but I've just I've taken those eight.

I mean, I've been working on this for decades.

I haven't run out of it's never run out of ideas

how God is not like his names run dry.

You know, when you only choose eight of them.

But start with those eight

and think about what they mean about who God is.

Take those eight and think about those eight aspects

and how they relate to your life.

The circumstances that you're in.

What does it mean that God is your shepherd right now

that he's leading you?

What does it mean that he's your healer right now?

What does it mean that he is your righteousness?

Or that he is the one that sanctifies?

He sets you apart in this world as his own.

And then let His

Spirit teach you more about who he is.

As you learn how to run into this tower, as you learn to tuck yourself away

in that tower and just rest in him and meditate on his name.

Because in the name of God, it's not just magic.

Sometimes we pray in Jesus name

and we think that suddenly fairy dust sprinkles over from the heavens, right?

And it makes everything we just said work.

But that's not the name of God.

That's not how the name of God works.

It's not what it's about.

God's name represents the person

that they describe.

We are healed when we are surrounded

by the person who is our healer,

and then

we run into that place.

The tower is not just a name.

Tower is the person who the name is.

That's where our strength, that's where our safety is.

We are provided for when the one

who gives all good gifts comes alongside of us.

Running into the tower.

It's about reminding ourselves of who God is already

and what he is always and already up to.

It's not just a reaction to somehow

get God to do its magic in our lives, right?

And make him work.

It's learning how to walk every moment of every day with him.

But out of these eight names, here is one

that I wanted to introduce you to because it's like a starting point.

It's like the door that everything opens up, all the other names.

And that one is the Lord, my shepherd.

So if you were to take one name, this would be the one

Psalm 23.

23 one says,

the Lord is my shepherd, is hyphenated, means the Lord, my shepherd.

And we look at that, we say, really?

I mean that one.

That's that's like the most it's like, that's the one

that we already think that we already know the most about.

Right?

Many of us grew up with that name.

I remember there was a time when, years ago when we had a friend

that was going through a really hard crisis and we were praying,

and in the middle of the night, God wakes me up.

He says, hey, I want to teach you about Psalm 23.

And I had the same reaction.

It's like, really Psalm 23.

I mean, I memorized that when I was a kid in VBS.

I, I've read all kinds of books on that one.

I've heard all kinds of sermons on that one.

I know Psalm 20, really?

And then you remember he's talking to you and you go, oh, okay, let's go.

Right on. Let's go learn about Psalm 23.

And the first thing he started out with was that knee

said, the Lord,

my shepherd says, remember,

remember that in Mesopotamia,

in the Middle East, during the time that this was written, Shepherd

wasn't just talking about a group of guys that were out there taking your sheep.

Shepherd was the name for king.

The king of Babylon was depicted as shepherd,

king of Assyria was talked about as a shepherd over his people,

the Egyptian Pharaoh, when they were dyed and depicted,

their arms are crossed and the holding one hand they hold the scepter,

the mace, the war club, the other they hold the shepherd's crook.

Because they were seeing the shepherds, they're called.

So, David, he's not just saying, I want to give you a nice picture here.

God's my shepherd, and I'm like, you sheep is on this cozy green.

Now he's saying, you know what?

You can choose whoever you want to sit kind of guard over your life.

You can choose whoever you want to be your king.

You can choose whoever you want to provide for you and to come alongside

you and train you and lay down laws that are good and just right.

You can choose who you want, but Yahweh is my shepherd.

Yahweh is my King.

There's a lot more there

than just a pretty picture.

And why is that?

Why is that important for us to know?

It's because many times we come to God as if he's our servant.

Don't we?

We treat God as if he's kind of just waiting, just hoping we'll call on him.

He's just sitting by the phone while they call the day right?

He's not our king.

He's more like,

you know, we are so glad that that he

he has decided, you know, that he attends to our our lives.

He's running around after us, you know, picking up the pieces.

We're so glad.

Because as busy as we are, we sure don't have time to pay attention to him, right?

We don't have time to give to him, to draw our eyes towards him

and wait to find out what he's up to, because we have too much going on.

Many times we

come to him when we need him, right?

We pray that it will provide, he'll provide,

or he'll he'll comfort or encourage or support us,

or he'll be present,

but we want him to keep his distance

because the things that we want to do, the way we want it to,

we want to keep his hands off the things

that we think we can figure out on our own,

things we can figure out in our own strength, brilliance,

that amazing intellect that we have.

But the Lord, my shepherd,

running into that reality, flips all that flips

all that I say, you know all that I could boast in.

Paul said this.

All that I could boast in.

I throw it out with the trash because it's not worth talking about.

So that I might know him, that I might gain him.

I may be found in him

in an amazing

when we run into him,

when we run into him, into the tower of him as our king, as our Shepherd.

He then says that in Galatians 220 it says so

this is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

I run into him.

I find out that he begins to live in me.

He says, that's where the safety is found.

That's where the grace found

that suddenly

I have set myself aside so that he can be free to live

as he desires through my life, where he is the king and I serve him.

We have a hard time with this, don't we?

We've been told that our desires matter.

Our plans matter.

Our accomplishments are the greatest things that we can hold

up, the things we can boast about.

But literally Paul says in Philippians three,

he says, I count all these things as garbage,

as garbage,

so that I might be found in him.

Paul knew how to enter into a strong tower

of God's name.

So I want us to think about that.

I want you guys to think about that.

We'd love for God to be our our healer, our provider,

or the present one, the one who brings us peace.

But the entry really is to say,

first, you're my king.

You're my king.

Why don't we have peace?

Sometimes it's

because we go running off in directions that God doesn't want us to run off.

He says, well, to know my peace, you're going to have to quit

doing that, says, but I want to quit on that.

Why am I king or am I not?

Why I don't know, right?

God, I want your healing.

Well, if you're going to experience my healing, you're going to have

to give up what you're doing over here because that's making you sick.

Yeah, that's a hard one

because that means you might have to quit visiting our grandkids.

I'm sorry.

It's a bad thought. It just ran in.

You let it run out the other side.

That's not going to happen.

Sorry.

But you guys, this is the key.

If we're going to experience the fullness of God's grace, his love power,

our lives.

The starting point is he is asking us to let him be king.

King? We don't mean like that word.

When I think about that word, we don't like the word like submission, right?

Submit our will to his.

Submit all our plans to him

that his not

the test be not how strongly do I feel this desire?

But how closely does this desire align with his purposes

in His Word and his call?

His desire for my life

becomes about his lead and his shaping, his timing.

So think about that.

I mean, where are those places in your life that you're still trying

to hold on to that kind of self-rule, right.

That's self-guided to self self-reliance,

because those have to go.

Those have to go.

To rely on those is to rely like that rich man did

right in that false tower, that false

fortification.

Promises that many of us would say, well,

that's just too high of a price to pay, right?

If I do that, what am I going to have left of myself?

We think we're going

to lose our complete identity and all that.

And so we end up doing like what the rich young ruler did in the book of Mark.

This young man came to Jesus.

He said, what do I need to do to attend to inherit eternal life?

And she told him,

he said, one of the things you need to do is you need to sell all that you have

and give to the poor and come and follow me.

Says that and Jesus loved him

because he was already halfway.

I mean, three quarters of the way there.

She loved him.

But this man, he walked away.

He walked away because he had he had a lot of wealth.

He had too much in his eyes to let go of.

What we

miss when we do that is that when we go into the tower,

the identity that we receive from God

outshines any identity we could build in this world,

and not just by a little bit.

It's not just like the sun outshines the moon.

This is like the sun outshines the very darkness

of the abyss of space.

We don't realize that

the successes that we will have when we partner with God,

and what he's doing, will outshine any success

that we would gain in this world by magnitudes.

Jesus, as he said, what would it do?

What would a man gain if he were to gain the whole world?

What would profit him to gain the whole world but lose his very soul?

Yet we find that when we

don't enter into a relationship with God, when we don't enter in that relationship

that we were created for, that we were made for, designed for,

we really are forfeiting our soul.

The reality of who were made to be.

This isn't like God is saying, hey, there's many towers out there.

I hope you pick my sin.

There's one tower, but it begins with this place where we say, you know what?

I lay aside my own sovereignty,

my own control over my own life.

I lay aside any,

possibility of boasting

in any of my own accomplishments, any of my own strengths.

God, if you want to use them, great.

If you don't show me what you want to do.

Because I believe.

I believe that he is the better shepherd than I am.

We find that as as we do that

God receives us.

He adopts us as his children.

He births into new life.

He lays on us the authority of the Kingdom of heaven.

He calls us to his purposes.

He gives us right standing with him through His Son Jesus.

He gives us the very power of the indwelling

Holy Spirit of God

in our lives.

We might count everything as loss,

but there's no loss

that we find when we running to his tower.

And then.

Lord is my shepherd.

So in the next weeks, I want to encourage you guys to do something.

I want you to take just that name.

Just that name.

I want you to start think about what does it mean

for me to enter the Tower of God's name?

What does it mean to pray into the name?

Whether I want you to do something?

You don't have to be going through any kind of a challenge to do this. Now.

You don't have to look for challenges or jump.

You will find you in your life, but

start getting used to

living in the tower before you need it.

Start getting to know who God is before you need him to be that,

because then when you hit those times,

there will be a confidence of I don't have to worry.

I know who my tower of strength is.

So get to know.

Get to know Yahweh, Rahim, the Lord,

your shepherd, the Lord your King.

Start to pray.

You can pray.

This is a prayer of petition where you run into those times.

You say, God, I think I still have.

I'm hanging on to this piece, hanging on to for control here.

Be my shepherd.

Teach me how to let you be my shepherd

here I will let this thing go.

How to put it in your hands.

How to release it to you and let you lead.

We can.

You can pray a prayer of thanks.

In those areas where you look at, you say, I've learned how to do this.

You can say, God, thank you that you are my shepherd.

That's still that's running in the tower.

You're going in. You're going, oh, yeah, the tower.

I remember this place. God is my shepherd.

And sometimes we need that, right?

Sometimes we're going through life and everything gets chaotic.

We start grabbing hold, we're like, oh, now he's my shepherd.

Yeah.

The other thing

is, as you pray, pay attention to the spirit.

Because what he'll probably be doing is he'll probably be highlighting

these different things in your life, these different attitudes that we have,

these different things that get in the way,

these different towers that we're trusting.

And other than his, these places where we boast,

these places where we try to control,

these places where we try and get this one right, does this do you guys do this

where we try and convince ourselves that our will is God's will, right?

You guys ever done that?

Are you sitting there? You're going.

No. I'm pretty sure this is what God wants.

And God says, hello?

Yeah, I got it. God, I know what you want. Right?

Let the

Holy Spirit highlight those things as you pray.

Because he will.

He will if you'll listen.

Because what he wants to do is he wants to put to death

these imaginary protections.

He wants to level

these imaginary things that you think will protect you

in the challenging times and the hard times,

the changes that will come, the tribulations that you will find.

He wants to get rid of those so that when those times come,

you know where God's strong tower is.

You will find his safety.

You will find him as your King, who not only provides for you,

who not only leads you into good places, not only guides you,

but in that valley of the darkest shadow you have ever seen or not seen,

that you will fear no evil

because you'll know he is with you

and his power, his rod and his reach, his staff.

They will bring you comfort, not your own his

because you've run into his strong tower.

Amen,

Amen.