Yahweh Nissi

Well, god is so good and his time is good.

I just pray this blesses you tonight.

Whoo, everybody, stand up, real quick stretch.

Say this.

Say, lord, I love you, I love your holy written word and I love your spirit that breathes life on it.

I am a doer of the word and I reap every blessing from it.

In Jesus' name, amen, hallelujah.

Well, I'm going to continue my Names of God series that we've been talking about, sometimes on Wednesdays, sometimes on Sundays, but I just I see God's hand moving tonight on this particular one.

Tonight we'll be talking about Yahweh Nisi, the Lord, our victory, or the Lord, our banner, hallelujah.

You know, daniel 1132 says that those who know their God will be strong and do exploits or do mighty works.

And so we need to know God, we need to be enemy and immediately acquainted with him and know him by personal experience, not just by head knowledge.

But when we know him, we'll trust him, we'll listen to what he says, we'll be able to see him.

I mean, in Psalms it talks about he'll guide you with his eye.

You got to be looking him in the eye so you know how a parent can look at a kid and be like with the eye.

You know, just Tara knows, she knows, but we got to have our eyes on him, amen, looking at him, to see him, to know his mighty works and to know how he is.

And he is our victory and he is our banner.

And so the origin scripture for this name.

The only time this name of God is even mentioned in the Bible is in Exodus 17.

And so if you want to turn there with me, I will read it.

We'll read it together.

Well, first of all, it starts.

This is a wonderful chapter because here are the Israelites They've now come out of slavery in Egypt and there are three million Jews marching through the desert.

And it's a desert, and there's thirsty people, lots of thirsty people.

If an eight foot water main down near the ship channel can break and can flood the freeway, and you just imagine how much water it takes to water three million people.

And so anyway.

So they're thirsty and God brought water out of the rock.

He has a million ways to meet our needs.

But that's another name of God.

We'll have to talk about that another time.

We probably already did.

But then now they are camped.

So in verse eight, now Amalek, everybody say Amalek, that is an enemy of Israel came and fought with Israel and refudim.

And Moses said to Joshua this is the first time Joshua gets mentioned, he is the leader of a volunteer army, so he's just a young guy.

He says choose us some men and go out and fight with Amalek.

Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.

Everybody say the rod of God.

And so Joshua did as Moses said to him and fought with Amalek, and Moses, aaron and her went up to the top of the hill.

And so it was when Moses held up his hand with his rod in it that Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, amalek prevailed.

But Moses' hands became heavy and so they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on that and the Aaron and her supported his hands, held them up, one on one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.

And then the Lord said to Moses write this for a memorial in the book of recount oh, in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heaven.

And Moses built an altar and called its name the Lord is my banner.

Yahweh nisi for, he said, because the Lord has sworn.

The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

So there's our story.

What a wonderful story of the power of prayer and how a leader has authority with his rod to stretch out.

I mean, we know our pastor prays for us and he'll say I stretch out my rod.

I know he's referring to this.

And then many of you who volunteer in the church, you're the Aaron and the her holding up his arms Hallelujah.

So the battle is happening.

The battle is happening in prayer first, and then Joshua is acting out the prayers out on the battlefield, where it actually, where everybody can feel it and see the results.

And and so how many of y'all are going through a battle?

I mean we all, or maybe you just came out of one, maybe you're about to go into one, but we don't have to worry about the battle because it is the Lord's.

So, 2nd Corinthians 2, 14 says now thanks be to God who always everybody say always always leads us in triumph in Christ and through us, diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place.

Many people could just know, they could just know Jesus, they could just know him.

It's a fragrance and they could just smell it.

They would want that.

They would want that victory, that smell, that triumph, and he wants to diffuse it through you and through your lifestyle.

And it says for we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

We are that fragrance that they smell, and it's a fragrance of victory, a fragrance.

And then I'm gonna and I want to tie it together with one more new testament scripture, romans 837.

I bet y'all know that this.

Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors, more than conquerors through him who loved us.

So Jesus fought the battle.

He was the one who had to beat the devil and smell his breath while he was an up close personal battle.

And we just get to reap the reward of everything he did when we stand under his banner, and that is a banner of awesome victory.

And so let's go.

A couple of things about a banner.

First of all, a banner is like a flag that they had in battle, but on a pole that hangs straight down, not that flies in the breeze and that flag would have.

For example, you could read in numbers and we're not going to tonight but in the Book of Numbers it enumerates all of the 12 tribes of Israel and each of the 12 tribes of Israel with how many hundreds of thousands of people were in that tribe.

As these three million Jews were progressing through the desert, they would have to stop periodically and camp and rest and they would make camp according under their banner by their family name.

So you had the family of Naftali and you had the family of Gad over here and they each had a specific place that they were supposed to camp North, south, east or West in relation to each other.

So if you were ever, let's say, you get lost and separated from your family and you're in the tribe of Judah, well, you just look up, somebody's got that banner and they're holding up the tribe of Judah.

That's where you belong.

You are in the tribe of Judah and because you could find that banner if you were lost or if there was a sudden battle, god had made a plan for the way they march in battle who gets to guard the Ark of the Covenant, who gets to march first in the front lines.

There was a structure that God had and they could see what was going on in the battle.

They could see who was victorious in the battle because somebody was holding up the banner with the family name Hallelujah, hallelujah.

And so it's an identifier, and God wants your family name to be one of victory, one of success, hallelujah.

Whatever family name you were born into, he has called you out of that and he has called you into his glorious family under the name of Jesus, hallelujah.

And that name is one of victory and he causes us to triumph because he already beat the devil for us.

So when we're reading this story, there's so many parallels that we can see.

So who did they beat?

This is interesting.

Who in this story, if we're gonna talk about Jesus overcoming the devil, or the Israelites overcoming Amalek?

Who was Amalek?

Who was Amalek?

So I looked that up.

Amalek is from a lek really means lick, and am is blood, and so Amalek was descended.

It was a word of he who licks the blood, the bloodthirsty, blood-sucking wolf, the devil who roams about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, him, resist.

You know, we were supposed to stand in faith against that, amen.

And so they beat that wolf and so you have the wolf of the devil.

Think of the blood-sucking carnage that a wolf might, and so think of that word or origin carnage carnal.

So then, like a lesser form of that enemy, is the enemy within our own flesh that we have to beat down and not feed.

And we have to put it.

And we're supposed to make no provision for the flesh.

The apostle Paul says Don't make provision for it If we're gonna feed a wolf.

Have you ever heard that old poem?

There's a white wolf and a black wolf.

And why is that imagery?

I don't know.

But you're supposed to feed the good things in your life because you want those things to grow and you starve the thing you don't want and you make that go away and decrease.

So feed your good things, feed your good side, feed the spirit man, and then the flesh will wither up and die pretty soon.

He'll be so weak you can't even feel that temptation.

I'm not even gonna let that temptation yanking on you anymore as we mature and grow in the Lord.

The good news is that temptation that tries to drag on you all the time it gets.

That voice gets weaker and weaker the less you feed it.

It's awesome I tell this story all the time.

I had to go on this.

Dr Bill Vell was a very special diet one time, and I like chocolate and I like to bake things and I like bread, I like stuff dude, that's yummy.

And so I had to go on this diet and I couldn't have.

I mean, for the first few weeks I couldn't even have any fruit there was.

It was nothing sweet at all, it was all like meat and vegetables.

Salads, not even like, not even all the vegetables.

Carrots, no, potatoes, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's starch.

And so it was just all this real strict stuff and I thought how am I gonna do this?

But as I got into it I realized that I after about two weeks I kind of forgot what the good stuff Dave was like anymore and I was able to kind of live and I kind of looked forward to eating.

I learned that I liked butternut squash.

I learned that I like cabbage.

If I made it a certain way, which normally I hate it, I thought I hated cabbage.

But I learned one time I made Brussels sprouts and James thought it smelled up the house and didn't want me to ever make that again.

I put bacon in it.

I could have bacon, but I learned after a while that the taste of that I forgot with the bad.

For me stuff tastes like and I desired the good stuff.

And that all went away when y'all sweet church, but ladies made me cookies and then I couldn't look you in the eye and say, no, I will not eat your cookies.

But you know, when we feed, we feed the spirit man and our flesh will get weaker, our spirit man will be stronger and will be under that banner, and okay.

So who else is Amalek?

He is the first enemy of Israel, and so in number 22, remember Balaam, the false pride, or the prophet that the king, balaek it's confusing all the bails.

Anyway, balaek, the king of, I believe, moab, commissions this prophet to curse Israel.

Amalek was called and Balaek was an Amalekite and he's the accuser of the brethren.

Ooh, he's trying to curse you.

The devil is always trying to put his curse back on you, and Jesus already redeemed you from that.

And so, anyway, when our victory banner declares our complete victory over that curse, over that flesh and that blood-sucking wolf, and finally it declares our victory, who else is Amalek?

Amalek is also called in other historical contexts.

There's a people group that roughly they think it's the same people of Amalek.

Amalek was actually the first guy named.

That was the grandson of Esau, and you know about Esau, he's a vain man.

Hebrews called him a profane person.

He did not fear God, anyway.

So other people have referred to all, and so these are his offspring.

Amalek is all these offspring from the grandson Amalek, who is the grandson of Esau, and anyway.

And so they're called, instead of just being called by their name, they're called the plunderers.

And so we've been redeemed.

When we stand under our victory banner, we are redeemed from the plunderer, the destroyer, the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy, who steals your stuff, who steals your joy, who steals your peace, who plunders.

No, no, no, he has no place in our life because we stand under the family name of Jesus, we are under that victory banner, and so we think about plunderers.

So Amalek does show its face again.

Here it was, and so, first of all, we'll go through a couple of these.

But in Deuteronomy 25, moses is, he's recapping before he goes on to heaven or the bosom of Abraham, wherever he went, he recaps the law and tells it to the people.

And he says in Deuteronomy 25, verse 17,.

Deuteronomy 25:17

Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt I mean, you just came out of Egypt out of slavery and how he met you on the way and attacked your rear ranks.

In other words, it says all the stragglers at your rear.

So it was a ruthless way that he came, that these people came and just attacked the probably the children, the elderly in the back of the group when you were tired and weary, and he did not fear God.

Therefore, it shall be when the Lord, your God, has given you rest from your enemies all around in the land, which the Lord, your God, is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven and you shall not forget.

So God didn't like that.

God didn't like the way and God didn't like the way the devil tries to deal with us.

Today it's illegal, all right.

So God didn't like that and he said I want Moses, I want you to remember, I want you to tell the people, to tell their kids, tell their kids that these people are bad.

But you know, in the New Testament we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

We're not anymore trying to find a certain people group, the Amalekites.

For one thing they don't even exist, because under later down the line, after King David's great, great, great, great, great great grandson, king Hezekiah remember, hezekiah fought with another king called Sinakarib.

I think we told that story recently here in church.

And under that guy, that king of Assyria, under he like, assimilated all the Arab people groups and just mixed everybody together, everybody intermarried, everybody intermingled.

You couldn't possibly find Amalek anymore.

For all I know, I got Amalek in me and you got Amalek in you.

That's why we don't care what banner we used to be under, that's, old things are passed away.

We don't care about the people group, we care about what the new banner, the name of Jesus and so and we care about that spirit of Antichrist for the people marching under the other banner.

And that's our enemy.

It's not people, it's not flesh and blood, it's principalities, it's rulers and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.

It's all of the spiritual side of it.

And so we stand against that, all right.

And so the plunderer, the plunderer in 1 Samuel 15, y'all remember now, later on, so Israel goes through.

We've taken that out of the desert.

They do possess their land.

They're under judges, then they're under kings, and the first king is King Saul.

Remember King Saul and King Saul in 1 Samuel 15, god gave him.

We should go there, all right?

What's the heading?

Right as soon as you turn there, my Bible has headings.

And so King Saul Saul spares King Agag.

Well, guess what?

King Agag was an Amalekite, he was Amalek.

And y'all remember what the Lord Samuel also said to Saul the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people, over Israel.

Now, therefore, he the words of the voice of the Lord I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel all those years ago, all those generations ago.

So now God says it's time for you to wipe him out.

You, saul, I'm giving it to you, you will wipe out this evil from the earth.

Did he do it?

He didn't do it, he almost did it, he did a lot of it, but he did not have the guts to finish the job and he left the king alive and therefore the Lord rejected him as being king.

From that moment, the anointing left Saul and he became a tortured soul because he had the position of king without the anointing and the presence of God to uphold him in that role, and it's a serious thing.

I mean, god wants us to come against the plunderer.

He hates evil and we're not going to take our see now.

We're set against evil in this world.

We're set.

That's why we pray and speak out against certain things.

There are things that are evil and we can't just pretend they don't exist.

We're going to pray about them until they're gone, until they're annihilated, and we have a victorious God that fights for us.

We're just all we're doing is cooperating with the Holy Ghost.

Pastor just preached a wonderful message on cooperating with the Holy Ghost.

Okay, who else is okay?

And so Amalek, they're still around Now.

Saul's rejected from being king Eventually.

The next king is David.

David is now the king and right before he becomes king he's not king yet, he's almost going to be king.

And the Amalekites attacked his town of Ziklag, where his wife and all his kids and Pastor preaches from this story from time to time.

It'll be familiar to you, but that spirit, that ugly thing, was still around to plunder.

We're talking about the plunderer.

The plunderer came and took the wives and the kids and all the stuff.

And I'm telling you, because there was a place made for the devil.

There was a place Saul didn't close the door and so we're going to close the door.

We got the victorious warrior on our side.

We're going to close the door to the devil, amen.

And so, god, we're working for him under his banner.

He already went out first and led and went to battle for us.

And so in Colossians 2, let's go ahead and pick up now where we are today.

Leave the Old Testament for just a minute.

Colossians 2, we'll start reading in verse 10.

It says and you are complete in him.

Everybody say I am complete.

You are complete in him, not in yourself.

In him, which is the head of all principality and power.

Jesus already beat him.

He already showed himself to be the head of them, in whom you also were circumcised, with the circumcision may without hands, and putting off the body I can't believe I had to say that word in church and putting off the body of the sins, of the flesh, by circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, wherein you also are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who has raised him from the dead, and you being dead in your sins, in an uncircumcision of your flesh and having that wrong banner over you for all those years and walking under your own flesh.

But he quickened us, together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross, and having spoiled here's the good part that relates having spoiled principalities and powers.

He made a show of them openly.

Try umphing over them in it.

He made a show of them openly.

So I don't care what battle you're facing, if it's a battle in your mind trying to just.

You know we got things that the devil tries to put labels on us from the past, tries to make us a part of some victim group because of what we faced and so we have to learn to grow out of that.

He tries to put us in a certain box, based on what socioeconomic strata we came from in our childhood or based on, you know, our limitations now physical limitations, financial limitations, mental limitations.

We're not in a box and so sometimes our battle is mental, sometimes it's relational with other people, sometimes it's physical.

Pastor's been preaching so wonderfully on healing and so I just trust that we are all of us receiving our victory in that area.

But, um, but God's already all of those problems, all of those.

They're attached to some demon spirit and they've all already been led through in the train of vanquished foes that Jesus already beat and he paraded them through hell, all chained up and beat and bruised, sad and slow, and he and he traipsed them through there just to display his glory over them.

And there is a wonderful description of this in Psalm 18.

So I'm just going to read a little part of it.

When I was 16, my dad taught in a family life institute in Lakewood.

It was their Sunday school program and I remember him preaching on this very verse right here.

But it talks about Jesus.

If you really trace the, we won't read the whole chapter.

It's a long one, but it talks about.

It first talks about Jesus when he first dies and goes to hell.

The pangs of death surrounding me I was four floods of ungodliness made me afraid and so, and then Jesus goes down.

After he, he says it is finished on the cross.

So he goes down, his spirit goes down into hell.

And then it talks about Jesus.

Jesus is in hell and then God got so mad and came and broke him out of that place and the Lord thundered from heaven and the most high, uttered his voice in verse 13.

And then, finally, by verse 37, he's beaten everybody, he's beaten them all.

He says I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them.

Neither did I turn back again till they were destroyed.

I have wounded them so that they could not rise.

They have fallen under my feet.

You have armed me with strength for the battle.

You have subdued under me those who rose up against me.

You have also given me the necks of my enemies, so that I destroyed those who hated me.

There's your Saddam Hussein.

He talks about Saddam Hussein, the brothers, I think, who had subdued an enemy.

Because this is still a thing, this is still a part of the culture of the Middle East If you are victorious over someone, you can put your boot on their neck.

So it says you have given me the necks of my enemies.

Jesus put his foot on the devil's neck, so I destroyed those who hated me.

They cried out, but there was none to save.

The demons begged for mercy.

They cried out.

They even cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them.

Praise God.

Then I beat them as fine as it does before the wind.

I cast them out like dirt in the streets.

Then verse 50, great deliverance.

He gives to his king and shows mercy to his anointed, to David and his descendants forevermore.

Hallelujah, it's a great deliverance.

It's a great deliverance.

He already won, he already purchased, he already beat the bad guy and all we have to do is walk under the banner.

Walk under the banner.

Don't feed the flesh, don't feed the plunderer.

We're standing against that.

And then I just a verse that.

So another word for banner is a standard and a lot of times I'll call that little sign a standard and a familiar verse.

But it comes up a lot in prayer Isaiah 59, 19.

I was standing with somebody recently who just had a terrible report from the doctor, but who's really fighting so strong and God, she's winning.

And it says verse 59, 19, isaiah 59, 19.

So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun when the enemy comes in.

Now in the King James it'll say when the enemy comes in like a flood, comma, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

So in other words, the enemy's coming in.

You know when a flood comes in.

Have you seen those pictures, those video of the tsunami that hit Indonesia.

Remember, the water just came from everywhere.

It just if there was a building, there was water coming through the windows, coming around both sides of the building, over the top of the building, under the building.

It was everywhere, and so that flood imagery is so when we feel overwhelmed sometimes we'll think of this verse.

But I want you to switch it around, because you know there's no punctuation in the Hebrew, just like there were no vowels.

We talked about that last time.

There were no vowels, no punctuation in the Hebrew, and the punctuation was added later by translators.

What if they put the comma in the wrong place?

What if it is?

So shall they?

What if?

What if it is?

When the enemy comes in comma like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

What if the flood is not the power of the enemy but it is the power of God and victory coming and wiping away the power of darkness that is coming against you?

I feel the anointing Hallelujah Like a flood, the spirit of the Lord.

I mean the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Why can't the power of the Lord come in and flood us.

So I'm gonna stop pretending like the devil is the one flooding.

I'm gonna say the spirit of the Lord is the one flooding my life, flooding my situation, flooding my battle, because he already won it for me.

I'm just standing confidently under his banner Hallelujah.

I have one more scripture.

I'm gonna close with this Song of Solomon 2.4.

You know, I grew up in church and we had a scripture song for every single day, every.

I mean so many scriptures.

I can't read my Bible without singing some song.

I'm trying to decide it.

I think it's a blessing because I know the word really good.

But sometimes those songs are kind of ticky tacky and so I'm kind of is Mount Zion on the sides of the North, the city of the great king?

You all heard that.

Great is the Lord, great.

I don't sing.

There's a reason I don't sing up on the stage, but I know a lot of scriptures.

So one of them is Song of Solomon 2.4.

He brought me to the banqueting house or to the banqueting table, and his banner over me was love.

His banner over me was love, and so now the Song of Solomon is a wedding imagery.

The entire thing is a romance novel, right, ms Karen.

And so so the song of Solomon is painting a picture of two people getting married and joining in a covenant, and so we know that God has brought us into his banqueting table and he has given us his name as a standard.

So we have taken his name and marriage to him, and his banner over us is love.

You know, in the Jewish culture, even today, when people get married, there is a beautiful canopy that they erect over the altar, and sometimes it's a flower, sometimes it's a, but it's called Pastor referred to it tonight.

It's called a hopa, it's a covering.

It's indicative of a tent that they're under the covering, together in this union.

And God's covered us.

So the banner almost becomes like this wedding canopy, this love over us.

All of this victory he did.

I mean, he did it for us because he loves us.

And so just remember that when the devil comes against you, if you just stand in the love of God, you just remember how much he loves you to have gone through what he did, and there's love there, and so we can just bask in that love.

That love is more real to us than any lack, than any problem.

I mean we can bask in that love and we can get a lot of victory out of it.

Amen.

So let's remember Jehovah Nisi, the Lord our victory, or the Lord, our banner, and let's stand under that banner all the time.

Amen, amen.

Oh, we have a couple of.

We have a couple.

Do we pray for Bryce?

I see you're here tonight.

Renee's having surgery.

Did we pray for her already?

Not today?

Okay, I have two prayer things we're going to cover.

Renee Trewick is having hip replacement going, that's right.

I hope I can say it, because now I just did, but we're going to pray and okay.

And then Angelina Ossikaphore is requesting prayer.

Okay, and she has an alarming symptom, but it's, it's got to fall under the victorious banner, hallelujah.

And so these two things in the name of Jesus, lord, we thank you for Angelina and for Renee and Laura.

We just thank you for your victory banner over them right now.

Your love has already covered over this and wiped it away, and that your healing power goes to them now, in the name of Jesus, and sets them on the right path.

For Angelina, lord, this, this will come to nothing.

This symptom is a lie and everything in her body, all of her systems and organs are working according to your perfect plan for her, lord.

You created her with perfection and Lord, we just thank you and it fills your health and vitality.

Flow into her now, in the name of Jesus, and she will accomplish everything you've called her to do With long life.

You'll satisfy her and, lord for Renee, lord, strengthen her, lord, I thank you.

When the doctors go in, lord, they're already fine.

You've been working in there and she'll have a very quick recovery.

In Jesus' name, amen, amen, all right, pastor, oh, shall we shall.

We simply already pray.

We can be dismissed.

It's only 844.

A look, the night is young.