Yahweh-Nissi
God By Name • Sermon • Submitted
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Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Greetings…
Over the last several weeks we have been studying the theme “God By Name” wherein we have been looking at the Old Testament names of God.
Last week we examined the proper name for God and the most popular name for God in the O.T. and that is Yahweh or as some translations have it Jehovah.
Today we go from looking at the most used name for God, Yahweh (6,828), to the least popular Yahweh-Nissi which is only found once.
15 And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner,
In our text here Amalek or the Amalekites have gone to war with the nation of Israel while they are wandering in the Wilderness.
Moses sends Joshua to lead an army of Israelites to fight the Amalekites while Moses goes up on a hill where he can see the battle.
As long as Moses keeps his hands up Israel wins but if his hands fall they begin to lose so Aaron & Hur each help Moses keep his hands up all day and at the sun setting Israel prevails.
It’s with this victory that Moses builds an altar and named it “Yahweh Is My Banner.”
The Hebrew word Nissi is found 20 other times in the O.T. but never again is it used as God’s name.
It means “banner, flag, standard”
Moses recognized that God was Israel’s banner under which they defeated the Amalekites and built an altar and named it such.
It was common during this, and many following eras, for each side to have a pole with a large flag or banner on at the battlefield for each side.
When a soldier found himself tired and discouraged, he could look toward his banner and regain his focus and be encouraged by it.
This is what God is to us, He is our banner of focus and banner of encouragement.
Let’s examine these further now.
Banner Of Focus
Banner Of Focus
The world can fuzzy our vision.
The world can fuzzy our vision.
The world around us can take our focus away from God and make our focal point on Him shift.
The world is good at shifting our eyes and goals away from God.
How many of those we know that were once faithful and then left the faith?
God warns of this danger over and over in the Scriptures.
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
18 “Hear then the parable of the sower: 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21 yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.
10 For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.
Because the “world can fuzzy our vision” we must look to “the LORD our Banner,” remove the plank from our eye and again make…
Yahweh our focal point.
Yahweh our focal point.
In this life there is no other we are to focus on more than God, He is the Banner of our focus.
We are to focus our heart on God.
8 “ ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
We are to focus our eyes on God.
2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.
We are to focus our love on God.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. 15 When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
We are to set our mind on heaven not earth.
23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,
2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
We are to focus on making God our Master.
24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
God must be our all in all.
Summary
Summary
The world will try and get us to drift away and lose focus on our God.
If we find ourselves tired and weary from fighting Satan and sin we must refocus on “Yahweh-Nissi” “the LORD My Banner.”
This revival of focus back on God only gets stronger as we gaze upon our God because His is also the…
Banner Of Encouragement
Banner Of Encouragement
God of hope.
God of hope.
When the world is striving to bring us down we need look no further than the “Banner of Encouragement” the God of our hope.
We are in a war with the world.
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
It can seem overwhelming sometimes, but we need only look to our Banner of Encouragement to see the hope it represents.
Seeing Yahweh-Nissi fuels our hope in a better life an eternal life.
When we find ourselves struggling with the weight of the world, we must look to Him who encourages.
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Our Banner of Encouragement is our God of hope and He is also our…
God of strength.
God of strength.
When we struggle and see the hope of eternity, our Banner of Encouragement, God can and will build us up and strengthens our soul.
Yes we are in a war, battling every day, but it is a war we cannot lose and when we look at our “Banner Of Encouragement” it strengthens our soul mightily.
15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!
Summary
Summary
Yahweh-Nissi, the LORD My Banner, is our Banner of Encouragement in this great spiritual war we are in.
Never lose sight of your God!!!
Conclusion
Conclusion
Will Hurd once said, “Life is hard. Life is difficult. Life is going to punch you in the gut.”
This is true, life is hard and difficult. It is going to knock us down and tire us out but if we keep our focus on God and stay encouraged by Him the difficulties and challenges of this life start to matter very little.
1 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus,
Invitation
1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
32 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.
8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.