Jehovah Nissi: The Lord's Banner of Victory

Peace, when you ought not have peace. Joy, when you ought not have joy. Power, when you ought not have power. Dr. Tony Evans says that's what we get when God's power invades our earthly situation. When you would normally quit, you still got fighting power.

Why? Because the spiritual is infusing you in the physical. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative.

For too many people, there's church life and real life—two different realities that weaken our faith and perpetuate our problems. Let's join Dr. Evans as he explains how all that can change when God becomes our banner of victory. Our name for God today is Jehovah-Nithi.

The Lord is my banner. God's people in Exodus chapter 17 had been complaining because of the lack of water when they had camped at Raphidim. And they complained and God provided. The highlight of their complaint is verse 7, when they said at the end of the verse, is the Lord among us or not?

Where is God when you need Him most? That was the question that was on the people's mind because things were dry. No water.

Things were dry. Well, the scenario is pointed out in chapter 17, verse 8. Then Amalek came and fought against Israel at Raphidim.

Raphidim is a rugged, desert place near Mount Horeb where the water source had been very low. God's people were weary and wouldn't you know it, now they've got a deal with Amalek. Amalek has shown up and Amalek wants to fight. Amalek wants to resist him.

Just when it looks like things have gotten better, they finally got some water, things go south again. And it looks like the Lord is not on their side. So Moses says to his understudy, Joshua, choose men for us, go out and fight Amalek.

Tomorrow I will station myself on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. Joshua did as Moses told him and fought against Amalek. Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. It came about when Moses held his hand up, Israel prevailed, and when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed.

Interesting. The problem was when his arms got heavy, his situation got worse. Because when his arms came down, Amalek prevailed.

Amalek is any force of evil that seeks to keep you from achieving the purposes of God. So the heavier or the more weighty the spiritual became, the more he began to lose in the earthly situation he was battling. His arms got heavy. So what did he do? Look at the verse here. The verse says, they took a stone, put it under him, and he sat on it, and Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other. Thus, his hands were steady until sunset.

Guess what he did? He had two brothers with him, one named Aaron and one named Hur. And you know their only job was to hold his hands up. Their job was to not allow the heaviness of the spiritual, making contact with God, go down because they knew if he lost sight of the spiritual due to the tiredness of his arms, the situation was not going to get better by getting rid of the spiritual.

Israel would not prevail. The dependence on God would have to be held up. But sometimes in life, you get tired. The reason why God wants you part of a local body is so that you're connected to an Aaron and a Hur. Some people who will hold you up when stuff gets heavy, when you are tired and you want to quit, and you want to, come on, somebody knows what it is, when you wanted to quit, throw in the towel, and there was somebody whispering in your ear, don't you quit, don't you stop, I'm going to hold you up, I'm going to be here for you, I'm going to support you, I'm not going to let you go down.

The reason you need somebody in your life who will keep your hands God-ward is because sometimes things get heavy. And you don't want to pray, and you don't want to talk to God, and you don't want to hear the Bible, and you know, things get heavy, and you need somebody, because look, if there were no Aaron, and there were no Hur, and things got too heavy, and he dropped, everybody lost. Because Amalek, evil, prevailed. They're so engaged in the fight that they are totally unaware that their winning or losing had nothing to do with their fight. Their winning or losing didn't matter how, you know, it had nothing to do with the power of positive thinking, I'm more determined, he ain't going to beat me, I'm going to beat him.

All that may have been going on, but their winning or losing had nothing to do with that. It had to do with Moses' arms. If his arms were up, Israel prevailed.

If his arms were down, Israel didn't prevail, no matter how determined they were. Could it be that the reason why your Amalek won't go away is because you think it's what you're doing that will determine the outcome? Now what you're doing is important. There is a role you play down here, but what you are doing is never sufficient if there's evil or tied to the problem. What many of us don't realize is many of the problems we're facing have to do with demons.

They're just using folk. So you're absolutely correct when you say, you ain't nothing but the devil. Behind a lot of this stuff we dealing with is demonic expression. So you just dealing with your physical is not addressing that. You may push it away for a while, you may manage it for a while, but you won't address it unless heaven gets involved.

Unless there is a banner. Joshua fought on the ground. Moses went up to the mountain with support. Verse 13 is the conclusion. So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.

He won. Write this down. Verse 14, the Lord says to Moses, you write this down in a memorial and you recite it to Joshua. In other words, put it on the record.

So I'm trying to give us the record today and the record I'm trying to give you is this. When you're fighting your battles, whatever battle those are that you're fighting, you do two things, not one. You give your best in the valley while holding up the banner on the hill.

And you get all the help you need to keep your hands high as you wait to overwhelm that which is right now overwhelming you. You may be under the circumstances. I cannot guarantee there will be no Amalek's. I can guarantee Amalek doesn't have to have you. But you've got to be on that mountain. There must be that spiritual presence, that spiritual commitment. And so he says, write in the book that I will utterly block out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's get this straight. I'm going to read too fast. What I want to write down in the book is I want to get rid of all of Amalek, not part of Amalek. See, the reason why some of us are losing is we still want to play around with Amalek. We want to get rid of half of Amalek, most of Amalek. God says I want to block out Amalek. I want to fully deal with the evil associated with the situation. See, what we want to do is have a part-time victory because we like some of the folk in Amalek.

Okay? We don't want to blot them all out. Let me tell you why he wanted to blot out Amalek.

This is very important. He wanted to blot out Amalek because he knew that if he did not get rid of Amalek, it would come back. It would come back to haunt you. Listen, if you have cancer, you don't want like a little piece of cancer hanging around and be all excited, well, we got most of it because it will come back with a vengeance.

It will come back with a vengeance. He says I will utterly block them out. First Samuel 15, God tells Saul, get rid of Amalek. He tells him in first Samuel 15, you get rid of Amalek and you get rid of them all. He got rid of most of them, but kept a few around as trophies. He kept some trophies around of look what I did with Amalek. God said get rid of them all. He said let me hang out, let me keep a few so that I can, and then he went to church. It says he went to sacrifice and worship God.

God, look what I did. I got rid of most of Amalek. God sent Samuel to Saul, and Samuel said you are no longer king, for you did not listen and obey the voice of the Lord your God. And then he gives him that famous verse which says obedience is better than worship, than sacrifice. I said get rid of them all. You kept a few around, whether for sympathy, whether for bragging rights, you kept a few around. The man who killed Saul was from Amalek.

Because he did not follow God, his murderer or the one who assisted him in his suicide was from Amalek. When God says get rid of it all, he's not trying to be mean. He know it'll come back with a vengeance. He says I want to utterly block them out.

I want to remove them. I want to get rid of all the evil. Because some of us are still hanging out with some of the evil.

It keeps coming back. We don't have it as full-time evil. We have it as part-time evil. Or maybe we don't have it as part-time evil, we just give it visitation rights. But then visitation rights become squatters' rights.

And now it makes itself home again. And you wonder why it's worse, because it says I want to block out Amalek, which represents the evil that is resisting you from reaching God's purpose for your life. He says you must address it all.

You don't hang out with a little bit of pornography just because you've gotten rid of a lot of it. So we think because we got rid of half of Amalek that there is victory. He says I want to block it out.

I want to remove it completely so that there is victory completely. So you name it, whatever it is that is upon you, and I'm not hating, what I'm trying to say is that the spiritual and the physical must be joined, but the goal must be blotting it out, not tinkering with it. More from Dr. Evans on why a partial victory isn't enough when he continues our message in just a moment. First, though, you can dig even deeper into today's subject and put the principles to work with the help of Tony's popular devotional, Experience the Power of God's Names. It'll take you on a day-by-day exploration of what the biblical titles for God tell us about His nature and character and help us understand how He wants to relate with us. And to help you connect what you read with Tony's teaching, we'll send the devotional to you along with all 14 messages on CD and digital download from Volumes 1 and 2 of our current series, Knowing God's Names. All we ask in return is that you make a contribution to help us keep the alternative coming your way each day. You can get the details and make the arrangements instantly at TonyEvans.org or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you.

That's 1-800-800-3222. Well, Dr. Evans, we'll come back with more of today's message right after this. Coming to theaters this November. We're at the Church of the Nativity here in Bethlehem where it is believed that the birth of Jesus Christ occurred. Travel with Dr. Tony Evans as he retraces the life and human journey of the greatest being to ever walk this earth. Well, we're here in Capernaum, a place where Jesus did most of His miracles. And it is in this place that He demonstrated He truly is the Son of God. You'll travel the streets, fields, and synagogues that Jesus walked and visit the locations where some of the most powerful events recorded in the Bible took place. It is highly likely that much of what we read about Jesus' ministry in Galilee happened right here. Journey with Jesus in theaters November 15th, 16th, and 17th with Dr. Tony Evans.

Visit TonyEvans.org for locations, showtimes, and to learn more. Moses built an altar and named it Jehovah-Nissi. The Lord is my banner. The Lord has sworn the Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation. Whenever Amalek messes with you, Amalek will mess with me because I am your banner. So that raises the question, doesn't it?

What's your banner and my banner today? What exactly am I supposed to hold up to deal with my realities? You know, one of the movies I saw that just blew my mind, I mean, it's probably for me one of the greatest movies I've ever seen was the movie Inception. And the movie Inception is about a dream world. This man could enter dreams. And what made it intriguing was you enter a dream and then he would enter the dream's dream. Then he entered the dream's dream's dream. And then he entered the dream's dream's dream's dream. So he had descended into four levels of dreams.

Now the problem with that is reality got all confused. So what he created was a totem, a spinning top. A totem is a instrument designed to guide you.

That's what a totem is. Whenever he wanted to know which world he was in, he would spin the top. And if he spin the top and the top just kept spinning and wouldn't slow down and fall over, he knew he was in the dream world. But if he spun the top and the top fell over, then that meant that he was in the real world.

He established ahead of time what the standard would be that he would operate under. He would know that he was in the real world by virtue of what the top did. Did it fall over or did it keep spinning? That's how he measured reality. You see, stuff in life can get so confusing, you don't know if you're coming or going. You don't know whether you're in and out. You don't know whether you're up and down.

Stuff just is crazy. You need a standard outside of yourself to tell yourself whether this is really yourself. You need something outside of you to measure you by which you will interpret reality and by which decisions will be made because you have this standard that is objective and not tied to your emotions right now, what you're thinking right now, how you're feeling right now, what you want right now. You need something outside of you to tell you reality, the standard, that which God uses. Because, see, some of us are operating with the enemy thinking we're operating with the Lord. Some of us are operating in falsehood, but we think we're operating in truth. Some of us go around talking about my truth, but your truth ain't the truth.

It's just your temporary truth. There must be a standard by which you operate, and that brings in Jesus Christ. In Numbers 21, you don't have to turn there, but it's an interesting story. The people rebel against God. Snakes come that are poisonous and bites them. In other words, there are consequences for their rebellion.

The people began to cry for mercy. God said, here's what I want you to do, Moses. Get a pole and put a bronze serpent on it.

Hold the pole up high. You tell all of Israel, watch this now, if they will look to the serpent, they will live. Everybody that looked at the serpent lived. Everybody's still looking for a doctor died. Everybody's still talking to their friends died. Everybody's still dealing with the power of positive thinking died. Everybody trying to do better died.

Everybody made promises I'm gonna do better next week than I did this week. They died because God only had one standard. He said, if you look, you will live. Everybody who looked lived. Everybody who had other reasons why they needed to do something else died.

They chose their own standard based on their own thinking. The New Testament in John 3 uses that very same illustration pointing to Jesus. It says in John 3, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up and everybody who looks toward him will live and everybody who doesn't will die. I don't care how good you are.

I don't care how much you try. If you've not learned to hold up Jesus, if you've not learned to make him the standard under which you operate, then all your hard work, all your good efforts will appeal to nothing because God says you must operate under my standard. And in John chapter 12, he says that I'm gonna be lifted up and I'm gonna be the standard. And he says, when I am lifted up, if you point toward me, I will be your victory unless you are pointed toward Jesus Christ, unless you're operating by his will, his word, and his standard, you don't have the spiritual help you need to deal with the battles you're battling down here. If Jesus is just an addendum, but not the standard, not the thing by which you measure whether you're in reality, God's reality, or just your own reality, then you're just a good man, good woman doing the best that you can.

Do you know that your solutions to many of your Amalek problems are right in front of you? You've been working 10 years to solve something that could have been solved by the end of the day, but God can't get you to operate under the standard or the devil makes your hands too heavy and you're too proud to have Aaron in her so that you can hold your hands up and stay pointed toward Jesus. Because if he could ever get you to keep your focus on Jesus, you would see the supernatural into the natural and bring about a change. And even if your situation doesn't change, he can change you in your situation so that you have peace when you ought not have peace, joy when you ought not have joy, power when you ought not have power, patience when you ought not have patience. When you would normally quit, you still got fighting power.

Why? Because the spiritual is infusing you in the physical. Dr. Tony Evans, talking about how God's power can invade our earthly circumstances. If you'd like to have a copy of today's message to review on your own or pass along to a friend, you can get it as a part of Tony's current teaching series, Knowing God's Names.

For a limited time, you can receive all 14 messages in this powerful two-volume series as our gift, including some lessons we won't have time to present on the air. And as an added bonus, we'll also include that companion daily devotional I mentioned earlier, Experience the Power of God's Names. Just visit us at tonyevans.org, make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on the station, and we'll send you both of these powerful resources as our way of saying thanks. Remember, we depend completely on your support to continue this important ministry. You can find us at tonyevans.org or reach out to our resource center by calling 1-800-800-3222. Team members are standing by around the clock to help with your resource request.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. When you look around and take stock of what's going on in your life, Dr. Evans says your perception depends on your perspective. Tomorrow, he'll explain how you can see life from a more peaceful point of view, and I hope you'll join us for that. Right now, though, we'll wrap up with a quick shout-out we received commemorating 40 years of God's faithfulness to the ministry. Here's Dr. Ed Young. It's my privilege to say a word of congratulations for 40 years of service to none other than my brother and my friend, Dr. Tony Evans. He rightly divides the word of truth day by day and weekend by weekend, not only to his church, but really he's a spokesman for Christ around the world. Tony, what a ministry. What a blessing you've been to countless millions of people in these 40 years. And I'll tell you a secret.

The best is yet to be. Congratulations. I'm thrilled to be your brother, and I'm thrilled to just follow in your wake as you make a wide swarf for the kingdom of God throughout this world. God bless you and your terrific family. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.