Jehovah Nissi: The Lord Is My Banner — Victory in Spiritual Battle

You're listening to the Greater Hope Church podcast, rooted in the gospel, growing in

community, and shining among people.

Today's sermon comes from the book of Exodus again.

If you'll turn with me there to Exodus chapter 17, you've got a Black Pew Bible under the

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

seat in front of you.

If you don't have your Bible with you today, you can turn with us to page 55 to find our

passage.

This summer we've got several weeks where we're looking at the names and the titles

that God gives to himself in the Bible, and we're trying to do a couple things.

We're trying to see what does this teach us about God, and then secondly, how does this

inform the way we're supposed to live?

How does it shape life with God?

And this morning we're going to look at this title, Jehovah Nisi, or the Lord is my banner.

Let's read together beginning at verse 8 of Exodus 17.

Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.

So Moses said to Joshua, choose for us men and go out and fight with Amalek.

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

So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek.

While Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.

Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed.

And whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.

But Moses' hands grew weary.

So they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it while Aaron and Hur held

up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side.

So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword.

Then the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the

ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.

And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, the Lord is my banner, or Jehovah Nisi,

saying, a hand upon the throne of the Lord.

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

This is God's holy word, and I pray that he blesses it to each of our hearts this morning.

Amen.

Well, in the year 1814, a young lawyer witnessed a very fierce battle, which was a part of

the War of 1812.

And if you don't remember your history, the War of 1812 was a war between Britain and

America, in America mostly.

And this lawyer was going up a river near Baltimore, actually trying to rescue a friend

from the British who was caught behind enemy lines.

And as he was going, he passed by a fort called Fort McHenry.

And it was that fort that came under attack by the British as he passed by.

There were cannon fire from all directions, and in a very short space of time, the fort

kind of crumbled down under the cannon fire.

Only at the end of the battle, as this young lawyer was watching, he noticed something

very significant, and he began to write a poem about it.

And you might not think you know this poem, but I assure you, you do.

It says, Oh, say can you see?

By the dawn's early light, so on and so forth.

And at the end, the banner, the star-spangled banner, in fact, yet waves over the land of

the free and over the home of the brave.

What's that poem, boys and girls, do you know?

The star-spangled banner, the national anthem.

And the reason I bring it up is because not only is it a great song, but because it reminds

me very much of this story that we just read.

The Israelites are involved in a very fierce battle in the wilderness.

They're going from Egypt to the Promised Land, they're being attacked by the Amalekites.

And at the end of the battle, we could all look up to the hill there and see a banner

yet waving over Israel.

Only if you look with me at verse 15, that banner is not sewn together, it doesn't have

human symbols in it, that banner is a person, that banner is the Lord Himself.

God names Himself in this story, I am the Lord, your banner.

I am the one under whom you fight and by whose strength you fight.

Now we need to think about that this morning because I want to tell you today, as Christians,

we have many battles to fight.

And they might not be the battles that you think of first when I say that.

They may be battles that you don't even ever think of, but they're unseen and yet very

real in your life.

And there's a way that God takes our side and helps us through each of those skirmishes.

And so if you look with me at your bulletin, I want to talk you through a few questions

this morning.

First of all, we're going to look at why a Christian, why God's people must be prepared

for conflict.

It's inevitable.

But secondly, we're going to look at how God's people prevail in that conflict.

And then finally, we're going to look at what our encouragement is in the midst of

the conflict.

All right.

And boys and girls, as you listen today, later in the sermon, I'm going to talk about my

childhood love for knights and castles and kings.

And when I talk about that, I want you to listen for your gospel gym this morning.

All right.

So first, let's think about why we must be prepared.

And we cannot be surprised that we as Christians have conflict.

Look with me at verses 8 and 9.

The very beginning of the passage, you see that this battle was not one that Israel was

looking for, and it was not one that they chose.

It was a battle that found them.

It chose them.

It came when they were least expecting it.

It says that Amalek came and fought with Israel.

They attacked Israel fiercely at Rephidim in the wilderness.

They waylaid Israel unexpectedly.

Later in the Bible, we learn that at this battle, the Amalekites actually began by attacking

the last people in the long line of Israelites.

By this time, Israel was over a million people walking through the desert.

And the Amalekites decided to pick on the last people in that million-person line because

they were the weakest.

They attacked the elderly.

They attacked the women and the children so that they could then overthrow the rest.

The Amalekites, we're told in the Bible, were descended from Esau, and they took up their

lives in the desert, wandering around like nomads.

And one of the main ways they made their living was by pirating other people's stuff, just

like this.

They attacked people who were traveling, and they took their stuff.

Israel did not expect this.

They were not looking for a fight, and yet the fight came to them, and it came to them

from Amalek, an ancient foe of the Israelites, descended, as I said, from Esau, who still

had animosity towards Israel because they were descended from Esau and not Jacob, like

the Israelites were.

And so what we see is something that one writer says is not at all just a small tribal conflict.

This is not just one little conflict in the midst of a long line of ordinary conflicts

in history.

This battle is a picture of the war that rages still today.

This war that's taking place between God and His purposes, and Satan and his purposes.

Or you could say it this way, God and His will and human beings and our rebelliousness

against God.

There's a battle that has been raging for many, many generations on this earth between

those two sides.

And the moment you, as a Christian, like Israel, get saved by God's grace, the moment

you get called along to join in God's side of that equation, you can expect attacks from

the other side.

You can expect that there are raiders of your spiritual life in this world, pirates of your

spiritual life, that are trying to come and attack you and take away the precious things

that God has given you.

Notice what happens next.

When Israel is attacked, Moses does not tell them, go and hide, go and run away, go and

pretend like nothing's happening.

What does he say?

Verse 9.

Choose for us men, Joshua.

Pick out the warriors in our midst and go out and fight.

Tomorrow you must fight.

Don't delay.

Don't go try to hide or pretend like nothing's happening.

But right now, go and find that army, put it together, and take your stand for the Lord.

And this is a great lesson for us.

When we're attacked, because of our relationship with God, and I'm going to talk about in just

one second how we're attacked, when we're attacked, we cannot delay.

We must stand for the Lord.

And actually, this is a part of the Christian life, we must fight.

We must fight.

Not with weapons of flesh and blood, not in a physical way, but we must fight in the spiritual

battle that is pitched against us as believers.

Now there's a scene in the Pilgrim's Progress that perfectly illustrates this, and I want

to bring it up because we know that our kids are going to do the Pilgrim's Progress VBS

in just a couple weeks.

At the very end of that great book, when Christiana is about to make it to the celestial city,

they meet a character named Valiant for Truth, or Brave, Courageous for the Truth.

This young man was a pilgrim as well, trying to make his way to heaven, but when they found

him, they saw him in armor, with a sword in his hand, and he was bleeding.

And they asked him, what in the world has happened to you?

Why are you bleeding?

And this Valiant for Truth begins to explain, I was going along the road just as you were,

I'm a pilgrim, and I was attacked unexpectedly by three enemies.

And these three enemies gave me three choices.

They said, you can either A, join us, turn on the king and join us to attack pilgrims

with us, B, go back to your house in the city of destruction and give up your pilgrimage,

or C, stand here and die because we're about to attack you.

And the Valiant for Truth said, I could not go back home because I left there on account

of it being destroyed, and I wasn't happy there, and I'm never going to turn on my king

because he's been so good to me, and so I knew I had to fight.

And I stood there, and I took the sword that God gave me, and I began to fight, and I fought

for three hours.

There's three different foes.

I fought until the sword became one with my hand, he said.

And then the blood began to flow, and I fought on harder still.

That's a great picture of how every one of us will be attacked by the same three foes

with the same three choices that face Valiant for Truth.

Now who are those foes?

I've got to tell you because I don't want anybody to think that what I'm talking about

this morning are the conflicts that we have because we're annoying to other people, or

because they're annoying to us, or just the little quibbles that we may have amongst one

another or with our neighbors or whatever.

I'm not talking about that kind of conflict.

I'm talking about conflict between God and rebellion, between God and Satan.

Here's the three enemies.

You may want to write this down.

This is classic biblical teaching about the three enemies of every Christian.

Number one, the world, the world.

And by world, we do not mean necessarily other people.

What we mean is what the world stands for apart from allegiance to God.

That's what we mean, the world.

The world and all of its anti-God ideas and its anti-God ways of living.

That world around us, which by the way, every one of us used to be a part of, every one

of us used to be just as guilty of all the same errors that we find in the world today,

that world is trying to intimidate us regularly into not following Jesus.

It's trying to seduce us and entice us away from following Jesus and into its own anti-God

way.

We're being attacked by the world.

But there's another enemy, and that second enemy is the flesh.

And this one, of course, is why we can't look down on the world and be self-righteous and

think we're better than everyone because actually the enemy comes from within.

It's our own flesh, our own sinful nature, which is still within us, though it's not

in control anymore, yet it remains and it is constantly fighting against what the Holy

Spirit is trying to accomplish in our lives.

It's warring against the Spirit.

The world, the flesh, and there's a third one, and I want to tell you, I'm not ashamed

to say it's real.

It's the devil.

It's Satan himself.

In some ways, he's behind the other two.

He's the one giving life to the other two.

He hates God.

And though he knows he is defeated by Jesus, yet he's even more angry because he knows

he's been defeated and is constantly seeking by many schemes to take people away from God

in heaven and to rob God of people in heaven.

And so he's attacking us, the world and the flesh and the devil.

That is the Amalekites.

The Amalekites here stand for everything that opposes itself against God and against His

Christ.

And let me tell you, when you sign up to follow Jesus, every time when you sign up, these

three are going to come knocking, and they'll come when you least expect it, and they'll

try to attack you at your weakest, at your most vulnerable hours.

And so it's important that we be proactive, that we take up the arms that God has given

us, and that we do what the Israelites did.

We go out immediately and stand under God's strength.

I wonder this morning, in what ways are you experiencing this conflict today between the

world, between the flesh, and between the devil and God?

How are you feeling that in your life, oh Christian?

I want you to make note of that.

Because now, in our second point, we're going to look at how we can prevail.

And this is where the story gets interesting.

One writer says that this story gets odd at this point.

He uses the word odd, and maybe I would use the word strange.

Because the way that Israel wins the battle, in verses 10 to 13, is not the ordinary way

that you win a battle.

I don't know if you know this, but this week starts the World Cup.

Where are my soccer fans in here?

And I don't know if you know this either, but America is hosting the World Cup.

It's coming here.

It's here.

And many people are wondering, can the USA win the World Cup for the first time ever?

Can this be our year since it's here?

Maybe Mexico can win.

Maybe Canada can win, because we're hosting.

We don't know.

And I saw an advertisement the other day for the World Cup, and it referred back to that

famous 1980 hockey game where America defeated Russia, or the Soviet Union, for the gold

medal of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

They call that game the Miracle on Ice.

And in that commercial they said, this is the year for our soccer miracle.

This is the miracle on the field this year.

And I thought, yeah, that's interesting.

I hope that happens.

But is it really a miracle?

Like, aren't we using that word a little loosely?

I mean, I know it was great that the US beat the Soviet Union on the ice, you know?

It was like a Rocky moment, where you beat the bad Soviet Union guy in the ring.

That was a great moment, but was it a miracle?

Just because an underdog wins doesn't make it a miracle.

But listen, this story is a miracle.

This is a true miracle, because look what happens.

Joshua did, verse 10, as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek.

So Joshua went down and did the actual fighting, and you might think, alright, well this is

just an underdog story.

One nation is fighting another with arms.

Read on.

While Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.

And whenever Moses held up his hand with the staff in it, Israel prevailed.

But whenever he lowered his hand with the staff in it, Amalek prevailed.

Now that's weird.

That is not, my friends, how you win a battle.

That does not work.

It doesn't matter.

You can get the greatest looking staff in the world and hold it up, and it will not

defeat anybody, unless that staff is the staff of God.

That's what this is, right?

It's the same staff Moses waved over the Red Sea and it split.

The same staff he threw down in front of Pharaoh and it became a serpent.

He picked it back up and it was a staff again.

It was the staff of God's mighty, powerful, miraculous wonders that he was performing

on behalf of his chosen people to deliver them out of slavery.

That staff is back in play, and Moses is there representing God on top of the hill, holding

up the staff, and as soon as he holds it up, they win.

But the moment he lowers it, they begin to lose.

And so it said Moses, being old, being weak, grew weary, verse 12, and so they had to put

a stone under him where he could sit down, and then Aaron and Hur came alongside, and

they lifted up his hands so that they could help him keep that staff over until the going

down of the sun.

His hands were steady until the sun went down, and so, verse 13, Joshua overwhelmed Amalek

and his people with the sword.

This is a miracle on the field, a true wonder of the Lord.

And here's the lesson for us.

When we are in conflict with the world and its ideas and its temptations and its intimidations,

when we're in conflict with our own sinful natures and being drawn astray by our own

desires and lusts, when we are being attacked and accused by Satan in our hearts and in

our minds, we cannot rely on our own weapons to win.

Human weapons cannot win spiritual battles.

And yet, if I'm honest, I often underestimate these enemies, and I go into them with self-confidence,

and I think that I can easily win, like I say things like, when I see someone else sin

or make a mistake, I think things like, I would never do that.

Have you ever said that?

I wouldn't do that.

I wouldn't do what she did.

I wouldn't do what he did.

I can go into that temptation and do just fine, because I'm strong.

Or I don't listen to the devil.

Why would I do that?

We have these cocky attitudes about our own ability to withstand the spiritual enemies

that are coming against us.

And yet, this story tells us, yes, Joshua had to fight.

Yes, we have to fight.

But the battle doesn't belong to us.

The battle belongs to the Lord.

It's won by His weapons and by His strength.

Scripture, in fact, tells us in Ephesians 6 that God gives us full armor for these fights.

He gives us salvation as a helmet, the assurance that we are saved to cover our heads.

He gives us righteousness.

The righteousness of Christ as our breastplate, keeping our hearts safe against all the darts

and the swords of our enemies.

He gives us a belt of truth, that the truth of God's Word would hold on to us and hold

everything we have together.

He gives us shoes of the gospel of peace that make us ready and able to fight.

He gives us a shield of faith to quench fiery arrows.

And He gives us, above all, that sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, to make war against

the world, the flesh, and the devil.

These are spiritual weapons, which are exercised in spiritual ways, by the Word, by prayer,

and by us relying on one another for help in those dark moments.

After all, you and I get weary like Moses does.

We need people to hold our hands up sometimes.

We need one another to encourage each other against temptation, to encourage each other

against disloyalty to our Lord and to our King.

When you are attacked, do not underestimate your enemy and overestimate yourself.

Instead, run to the Lord, look to the hill from where your help comes from.

And that leads to our final thing today.

What is our encouragement in the fight, even when we're not winning, in the moment, what

is our encouragement?

After all, it tells us there, if you look back at verse 11, it tells us there were times

that day where Israel was losing, and Amalek was prevailing, and that must have been so

discouraging to Joshua.

It must have been so disheartening to the other soldiers who, by the way, had never

fought a battle a day in their lives.

They'd been slaves.

They've never fought a battle.

How discouraged were they?

And yet, look at verse 14 to 16.

God tells Moses first to write down a memorial, and then secondly, Moses builds an altar to

remember who God is.

Notice first, he writes down a memorial.

The Lord said to Moses, write this down as a memorial in a book.

And by the way, we're reading that book right now.

That's pretty cool, that Moses wrote down to recite first in the ears of Joshua.

And here's God's promise.

I will utterly, that is completely, blot out even the memory of Amalek from under heaven.

And you might think, well, that's cruel, and he's getting rid of a whole people group.

Is this like a license for war crimes and genocide?

No.

In the Bible, in the Old Testament especially, there are certain battles that the Bible calls

holy wars, holy battles.

And the reason it calls them that is because they're not waged by one group of people against

another merely.

They're not just humans fighting.

It is God declaring war on an enemy that has rebelled against him.

And God uses Israel for these battles.

And in this case, the Amalekites stand for those who oppose God's purposes in the lives

of his people.

And here God says, for those people, I have sworn myself that I will rid the whole world

one day of even their memory.

One day, our God is going to completely remove evil from this world.

One day, the world will no longer fight God.

The kingdoms of this world will in that day become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ.

Listen to this.

One day, we will not have any sin left in us.

I'm going to say that again, because I need to hear it this morning.

I don't know about you.

But one day, we will not have any sin left in us to fight against God.

And one day, the devil will no longer be able to do anything in this world as he will be

consigned to judgment.

God will utterly blot out the memory of his enemies from this world.

And that is the assurance of God's people.

We do not fight a losing war, even though we may be losing in the moment in a battle

or two.

We will not lose the war.

It says there in verse 15, Moses, to remember this, built an altar.

That was a way that they marked a spot and made a memory.

And it says he called the name of that Jehovah Nissi, or the Lord is my banner, a hand upon

the throne of the Lord.

The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation, and that is the great encouragement.

The Lord is the banner over our lives.

At the end of this battle, when all had been settled, there was on top of the hill God

himself waving in the air.

A banner over his people, a banner of victory, a banner of protection and help, a banner

of salvation.

Now, boys and girls, I want to briefly talk to you about my love as a child for knights

and for castles and kings.

When I was a kid, I used to check out books all the time in the library about the medieval

times.

And one of the things that I loved to look at were the old shields, or the old heraldry

is the name for it.

These beautiful pictures that kings and knights used to have that symbolized their family

or their group of fighters.

And they would put them on their shields or on flags and fly them as they went into battle.

They had all kinds of symbols on them.

You'll find lions, especially lions.

You'll find dragons.

You'll find unicorns sometimes.

You'll find stars.

You'll find flowers.

There's all different kinds of symbols that symbolized what they fought for and what their

confidence was in the fight.

And I just want to ask you this.

If God is our banner, boys and girls, and I ask you too, adults, if God is our banner,

what is on that banner?

What is the symbol that gives us courage, the symbol that gives us victory?

And I want to suggest there's two things on there.

First, there's a cross.

On the banner of God, there is a cross.

We need Jesus, the man on the hill.

Jesus is better than Moses.

Moses couldn't barely hold his hands up for a day.

Jesus went on top of a hill and he had his hands stretched out the whole day.

Did he not?

And no one had to hold them up because they were nailed there.

Because on that mountain calvary, Jesus held up his hands for the victory of God's people,

and the Bible says he triumphed over his enemies on the cross.

And so over our lives, there's the cross, the great and everlasting victory that God

has made over sin, death, and the devil, the great victory that he shares with us.

But I want to tell you there's something else on that banner.

On that banner is also a crown.

Because the Jesus who died and stretched out his hands that day until the going down of

the sun, that Jesus, when he rose from the dead, was crowned with many crowns.

He is seated at God's right hand even this day.

And he looks down constantly from heaven, from the top of that great hill, Mount Zion,

the new Jerusalem, the place where God is enthroned.

He looks down and he sees his people in all of their discouragements.

He sees us in all of our difficulties and our conflicts.

And he comes through for us, making us more than conquerors.

He comes through for us and fights alongside of us, making us conquerors with God.

I love what Charles Spurgeon said.

He said one time in a sermon,

Child of God, you cost Christ too much for him to forget you.

And I say that to you today.

You cost Christ too much for him to forget you.

I don't care how hard the battle is.

I don't care how often Amalek has prevailed against you, Christian.

Or maybe he's prevailing against you right now in some way in your life.

I want you to know Jesus remembers you and the banner over your life is a cross that

conquers and a crown that is vastly interested in you and vastly invested in you making it

from here to his right hand in heaven.

This morning, what is the banner that you love to fly?

Is that the banner you love to fly?

Does it have a cross on it?

Does it have a crown on it?