Colossians 1:15 - God's Attributes In His Names

Let me read you some interesting quotes about Mother's Day. So happy Mother's Day, moms, and we're so happy to honor you today. I wanna read you a couple of quotes by some very important men, Charles Spurgeon and John Calvin.

And then we have a little gift for you here in a moment. So first of all, Charles Spurgeon said, home is the best place for boys and men, and a good mother is the soul of the home. That day he was preaching on manhood.

Spurgeon said, the smile of a mother's face has enticed many into the right path. And the fear of bringing a tear into her eye has called off many a person from evil ways. Isn't that good? Yeah, don't wanna disappoint mom.

And then Spurgeon says, the devil never reckons a man to be lost so long as he has a good mother alive. Isn't that something? All right, it's interesting to read Calvin's because like I read maybe seven or eight different things he said and some of them were just so strong that I had to read them two or three times to figure out what he was saying.

But here's a couple that I think are very important and they especially speak even to our day and time now as well as in his day and time. Therefore, let women say, well, although the world has no regard for me, yet must I find myself occupied here at home for so God commands me.

And what he's talking about is how the world never thinks that the most important job in the world, which is motherhood is important. The world does not accept the fact that if a woman is raising her kids, that is a more important job than any other job a woman could have or that a man could have either.

And that's what he was getting at. And he said this, and moreover also, they, women, mothers have to consider that when they do their duty and execute their office, God accepts well of it, although men despise it.

Isn't that true today? Like if you're, how many times ladies, have you had someone say, oh, you don't work because you're not on the job or whatever? Oh, you don't work? Where do you work? Oh, I'm a homemaker.

Oh, you don't work? That's funny. That is very funny. So anyway, moms, we know the work that you do. And I agree with John Calvin that it is the most important job you have, and certainly a job that makes God smile.

And he's ordained that that be the most important job. So, and happy Mother's Day. All right, let's turn in our Bibles to Colossians. And we've gotten to the point in this book, verse 15, where most of the books, you know, the whole point of the whole book, the biggest point anyway, is the deity of Jesus Christ.

And it's a marvelous book. I was able to hear Dr. White, who is a great debater. I was able to hear him debate a Unitarian. And the Unitarians don't believe that Jesus is God. They think he's just a man and a prophet, but just a man.

Kind of like the Islamics believe he is. And so it was an interesting debate, but much of the debate centered around some of these passages in Colossians that we're gonna talk about. Dr. White used them to prove his point.

And he did a great job, by the way. You might pray for him because he's having health issues. And what's his first name? James, Dr. James White. If you can remember to pray for his health, it'd be great.

He's a powerful debater for Christ. But anyway, we're getting to that part of this book where it begins to shed light on that subject. And it's interesting because before it does that, it talks about the father.

Because you cannot understand the deity of Christ if you don't understand his father. And so that's where we were last time, if you remember. And I think we're gonna have to put these off. We don't have quite as much light.

So we talked about several things that we know about the father already. And then what we're gonna do is look in the passage in Colossians in the context in Colossians chapter one that deals with the father before it starts talking about the son of God.

So let's pray and we'll begin. Lord, we thank you so much already for our service today. Protect all of us as we go home in this weather. Thank you for your protection as we came in. Watch over us as we're here.

And Lord, we ask you to bless your word today and may your Holy Spirit lead us in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we talked about several names of God last time if you remember, a lot of times when you, in fact, every time when you see the name of God, it sheds light on his character.

It sheds light on who he is and helps us know him. And the very first name we ever heard of God in the Bible in Genesis chapter one is Elohim, which means the strong one who reveals himself. Remember that?

I'm sorry, the strong one who is faithful. And so the last part of the word means faithfulness. The first part, El, means strong one. So it's a strong one who's faithful. And then Jehovah, which is maybe the most famous name of God means the self-existent one who reveals himself.

That, I can't say what would be more important than the last aspect of that name who reveals himself. So important. And then we talked about Jehovah Jireh, which means the Lord who will provide. And we studied in Genesis 22 where God provided the lamb.

And what a beautiful story. So Abraham did not have to kill, offer his own son. God provided the lamb to be the offering, which is exactly who Jesus was. It was a picture of Jesus Christ. So we talked about that last time.

Jehovah Jireh is the provider of everything, but especially of the lamb of God. And I think, let's see. I believe we finished up with Jehovah Rapha. Did we mention that last time? I think we did. And that is the Lord that heals, the Lord that heals.

In Exodus 15, 26, God said that none of the diseases would be put upon them if they walk with God, none of the diseases of the Egyptians would be put on them, for I am the Lord Rapha, the Lord that healeth.

That's where we left off. So turn with me, if you would, to Exodus chapter 17, verse eight, we'll pick up a couple other names of God that are important. And then we're gonna go into our text in Colossians and see what it says about the father.

Jehovah Nissi and the Battle With the Flesh

All right, so Exodus 17, eight, then came Amalek. Amalek, now Ben, we didn't get here last time, right? In Exodus, Jehovah Nisi, no? Okay, good. Okay, so then came Amalek. Now to make this story have its fullest impact, we have to understand that Amalek is a descendant of Esau and Esau is a type of that part of us that we call the flesh in the evil sense, the bad sense.

Not that our body is bad, it's not, but the fleshly sins that we do when we talk about the world, the flesh and the devil and our flesh being one of the three enemies that we have, that's the sense in which I'm using the word.

And Esau is a picture of our battle with the flesh. Well, what's interesting is that Amalek is a descendant of Esau. And in Exodus 17, eight, it says, "'Then came Amalek, who fought with Israel at Rephidim.

"'And Moses said to Joshua, choose us out men "'and go out and fight with Amalek. "'Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill "'with the rod of God in my hand.'. "'So Joshua did as Moses had said to him "'and fought Amalek.

"'And Moses, Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill.'". And you remember the story where Moses would hold up the rod or hold his hands up and his arms would get tired and the other two men would hold his elbows up and help him keep the hands up.

And as long as his hands were up, they were winning in the battle. And when they were down, they were losing. This is an amazing picture of your battle and my battle with the flesh every day of our lives.

I want you to think about this. Have you ever asked the question, why does it seem natural to be fleshly and sinful with our thought life, with our actions, whatever? And why does it seem like work to be spirit filled?

Have you ever noticed that? Like it takes effort and thought to be spirit filled. Well, that if you, tell you what, sometime hold your hands up like this and see how long you can hold them up. See if you can hold them up for like 25 minutes without putting them down.

And what that teaches us is that it takes effort in order for you to walk with God and be spirit filled so that God's in control of everything and you have victory. And when those arms fall down, where you got tired and the flesh is taking over, you won't have victory.

The enemy will win every time. And it's a picture of that. So here we see this first picture in the Bible of this battle that we have every day with our own flesh. And you remember that part of the story.

So in verse 13 says, and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword because Moses was able with the help of others to keep his arms up. And as long as they were up, they won the battle.

So they ended up winning the war. And I want you to think it's kind of interesting to think that Moses wasn't up there by himself, right? He had two people, Aaron and her, helping him hold his arms up.

So that pictures why it's helpful to be part of a local body or part of a church. And so many Christians today, especially after COVID, they think they can just stay home, maybe read the Bible once a week, maybe listen to something and be okay and not be around other Christians.

Now, if you can't find a good church, a good Bible believing church in your area, some of you guys, it's great that you can be with us, right? But maybe you could find a friend, at least one or two Christians you could have coffee with once a week or something and talk about the Bible because you need someone to help you.

I've told this story so many times to you guys and probably you guys by now, but when Otis was with us, he used to sit on that second pew right there on the end for 13 years and I'd have coffee with him usually three times a week before I'd go to work.

And during the times that I sat with that man and studied the Bible together, I didn't want to get involved with the sins of the flesh. I wanted to be a good man just because I didn't want to disappoint him, kind of like what we read about moms, you know, but I didn't want to disappoint him.

I was that way with my dad and my mom too. I didn't want to disappoint him growing up. But as a preacher, I didn't want to do anything that would let that man down because I respected him so much in his walk with God, right?

And so if you can have someone in your life, and it's great when we are able to come together in a physical church like this, it's so important because it's like other people helping you hold your hands up and keep them up so you don't get in the flesh and get in trouble.

But if you stand alone as an island, I don't care if you've got a Bible and you're reading it every day and you're praying, you're going to have a rough battle. It is going to be hard for you to avoid the sins of your youth, the sins of your flesh when you're all by yourself, even though you have the Lord.

And even though, because Moses had the Lord, did he not? But he had to keep those arms up and he had two people helping him. So that's a picture of that. So a lot of cool things in this passage in Exodus chapter 17.

But in the end here, they won the battle and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. I love that word, discomfited. He made them less comfortable because they died. He slew them.

And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book. And guess what? It got written, didn't it? And we still have it today. And it's still for our admonition today for those of us who live in these end times.

Isn't that fascinating?

Write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Now, someday with regard to our flesh, that will happen.

Guess what day that is? The rapture or our physical death, whichever comes first. He will put out and away from us the weights and the fleshliness and anything that would pull against God will be gone.

Won't that be an amazing, maybe that's why we can float up all the burdens and weights are gone. We just float. I don't think it works that way, but it's gone. You won't have anything pulling against you and what you wanna do with the Lord and for the Lord when that day comes.

And there's a picture of that right there. And Moses built an altar and he called the name Jehovah Nisi. And that is one of the names of God that we study. And it means the Lord, our banner. Now, if you think about it, a banner, especially in the days of hand-to-hand combat, armies always went to battle with someone carrying a flag with a banner on it that represented their people.

And that banner is a banner of war. And the Bible says, God is our banner. Jehovah is our banner. So when you go to battle against Satan himself and against the flesh that wants to pull you down, and maybe you have friends that are fleshly, they will pull you down.

And when you're in that battle or in the battle with the world system, and you're being tempted by something in the world system, then remember who your banner is that goes before you in battle. It's God.

It represents that God's with you in that battle. So I mentioned it's best if you have a friend or two that walk this walk with you, but what if you don't? What if you find yourself alone on an island like John did in the last part of his life when he was 85 to 90 years old?

Well, you still have the Lord as your banner, and it is a banner of battle to help you fight against the enemies, which is the world, the flesh, and the devil. So we learn a lot about the Lord with this name of God, Jehovah Nisi, and the Lord, our banner.

God is the banner of his people. When they march against the enemy, and Amalek, a descendant of Esau, represents one of our most difficult enemies, which is the flesh, maybe the most difficult enemy we have.

Galatians 5 .17, for the flesh lusts against the spirit, and that's King James put that with a capital S. They believed it meant the Holy Spirit, not your spirit, but the Holy Spirit. So the fleshly part of us, our sin nature, lusts against the Holy Spirit who lives in us, even as a Christian, and the spirit against the flesh.

So the two battle against each other inside of us. There's a continual battle inside of us every moment of every day, and the one lusts against the other, the flesh against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you want to do.

You remember Paul's battle? He said, I find myself doing that which I don't want to do, and I find myself not doing that which I want to do for the Lord. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this?

And he said, the Lord Jesus Christ, but that would be either at his death or at the rapture. But one thing that helps, do you believe that as the children of Israel went into this valley with Amalek and had to face possible death, the battle was so onerous, do you believe that that was God's will for them to be in that battle?

What do you think? Wasn't a trick question. It was God's will for them to be in that battle. They had the risk of death. The wives had the risk of losing their husband, the children the risk of losing their dads, and then when they lost that, the enemy would come in and kill them too, kill the wives and the children if they didn't win the battle.

That's how they did it in those days. So a huge risk, but was it God's will? The answer is yes. So let me ask you this, do you think it's God's will that you and I every day suffer bad thoughts that come into our minds, evil things we see that the world puts in front of us, temptation, do you think that's God's will?

Most people would say no, but in this church, you know better because you know God is sovereign. So yes, it is his will and I can prove it because there's a scripture that says this treasure, which means your new man is in earthen vessels, which means your fleshly part, the part that would lead you the wrong way.

And it was God's will to put the new man in this body of flesh as it is. And it goes on in that same passage, the very next verse indicates that the reason it was God's will is because it brings him glory.

So on the one hand, we don't want to make light of temptation and a battle against sin and a proper battle against sin and trying to be a good man or woman as we walk in this life, we should never make light of that.

We should never say, oh, we believe in salvation by grace and it's okay. Whatever happens, Lord will forgive us. We should never walk with that attitude, even though it's true, he will forgive us, but that should not be our attitude.

Our attitude should be to fight the battle and win, to win the battle over the flesh. You're not gonna win every battle, but win the war, right? You want to, if you stumble in battle, you need to be able to go to 1 John 1, 9, confess that as a sin and then realize the Lord removes all of your sins at that moment.

He's already removed them, but basically what he's doing is washing your conscience and your mind so that you can get up and do what? Fight the battle again. And that is going to be your life. You're not gonna have victory over sin in this life.

There are whole denominations that say you can, and they're lying. You won't, it's God's will that you not, but it is his will that you fight the battle. It's his will that you go in that valley and you battle against Amalek till you beat that sin.

You see what I'm saying? And the Lord is all about changing us for the better and getting sin habits out of our lives as we grow in this walk. There's no excuse to hang on to one for very long. They didn't stay down in that battle and fight Amalek for like three months or five years, did they?

Think about that. They stayed in there long enough to defeat him with God's strength and power and the help of other Christians. And that's how it works. So when you have sin habits from your youth or you have, what do you call them in the work where you're helping people?

Oh, addiction. I don't know why that left my mind. Sin habits, addictions, things like that. You're in the valley with Amalek and you're expected with God's power to win that battle. So always remember that.

Go to Exodus chapter 17 and read the story. If you're in a problem area where there's something in your flesh that you cannot stop doing because you don't wanna stop doing it, but you know it's wrong and the Holy Spirit just puts that little tiny little voice in there and you just know, then read this story and believe it and understand it and it'll help.

And then get one or two people to hold your arms up like Aaron and her did. Go to some people and get their help. You don't need to even tell them what your sin is. I don't believe in that. I don't believe in confessing stuff like that to people.

Confess that to the Lord and go to your Christian friend or two and say, look, I'm battling with something and just pray with me. Then could we have coffee and study the Bible once a week together? And maybe your lack of desire to let that person down will help you overcome.

There are many things we can do in this area. But anyway, in all of it, remember that God is your banner. He's the flag out in front of you saying, follow me. We're going into battle and we're gonna win.

You get it? Everybody get it? All right. Galatians 5 .16 says, this I say then, walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. You wanna learn how to get rid of habits? You wanna learn how to get rid of addictions?

Walk spirit filled all day and you won't do that thing. That's a great point. Get a couple of brothers and sisters walking with you. It makes it even easier to avoid that thing. Galatians 5 .18, but if you be led by the spirit, you're not under the law.

So guess what? Guess what often doesn't work with addictions? It's making a bunch of rules like I will not do this again ever. That won't work. It just won't work. In fact, it might make it worse. But walk in filled with the spirit.

That's what you have to do and having some Christian friends to help even if they don't know what the sin is and they don't need to know, but they can help you be stronger. So there's that. So that brings us to the next one.

The next name of God. Judges chapter six, verse 23. If you want to turn there. Judges 6 .23, and the Lord said unto him, peace be unto thee, fear not for thou shalt not die. And then Gideon, which is an interesting story because Gideon was gonna lead a small army to victory and he was kind of afraid of everything.

If you read the story, it shows God has a sense of humor. But anyway, the story of Gideon, it says after Gideon actually was afraid and he beseeched the Lord, you sure I'm the right man to do this? And he said, yeah, go pick your small army and you're gonna win.

You're gonna defeat a big army. And when that had happened after he had the victory, look at verse 24. It says, then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord and called it Jehovah Shalom. Who knows what that word means?

Peace, a lot of us know that word. That's the Hebrew word for peace. So his name was Jehovah Shalom is what Gideon called the name of God when he built this altar. And until this day, it is yet at Ophrah in the, among the Abiezrites.

I'm kind of like Ben, I can say it to myself and it's hard to say it out loud. But this altar was there for many, many years in the Middle East, but it was named Jehovah Shalom. So he is the God of peace.

What does that tell us? Colossians 1 .20, and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him, that's Jesus, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.

So Jesus Christ, when he died on that cross in our place and he paid our sin debt, he propitiated God, which means God's wrath and his justice were satisfied by the death of Jesus in our place. And because of that, God is now known as the God of peace.

Whereas before we had Jesus in the blood, which cleansed, took our sins away, we would only look at God as a God of judgment. And we'd be, we would have more than the healthy fear of God like the fear of a dad, you'd have more than that.

You would have a fear of God like, he's gonna send me to hell someday. That's the kind that lost people have. That's how they fear God. And without peace, without God's provision, which we already talked about his provision, where he gave us the lamb of God, we could never call God Jehovah Shalom, but we can because we have the Lord Jesus and we're in Christ.

All right, the next one is in Psalm 23, famous Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures and leadeth me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.

Everyone remembers this beautiful Psalm. But Jehovah Ra 'ah is the name of God, which means the Lord, my shepherd. And if you look at sheep and you study sheep and how they are, it'll help you understand how we are and also how our shepherd is.

And I've said this so many times in my life when trying to explain to people what it means to be called unto salvation. It simply means in your life, you've probably heard about Jesus, especially in the Bible belt.

You've probably heard about Jesus your whole life, doesn't mean you're saved. Just because you know about him, doesn't mean you're saved. But there comes a point when something puts a desire inside of you and all of a sudden you see Jesus as your shepherd and you're the lamb and you're hungry and he's got the food.

And that thing that does that is not a thing, it's a person, it's the Holy Spirit. It is his ministry to awaken God's children who are still lost, his lost sheep as they walk across the world system. The Holy Spirit will find them at the right day, it's called your spiritual birthday, and he will awaken you.

And you will all of a sudden see that shepherd through the eyes of a hungry sheep and you'll know that he has the food and the protection and the leadership that you need in your life. And that's what it means to let him be your Lord.

If you're a sheep, you don't know how to do anything, you just follow the shepherd. So you let him be the shepherd, he's your Lord at that point and that's when salvation takes place, regeneration, I should say, takes place at that moment.

So he is Jehovah Ra 'ah, the Lord, my shepherd. And then we have another one. And this one is found in Jeremiah 23, six. In his days, Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, and this is looking forward into the millennial kingdom.

It's a prophecy about the millennial kingdom in Jeremiah 23. And in this day, God will be called Jehovah Tzedkenu. It's a little hard to say, but it's Jehovah Tzedkenu and it means the Lord, our righteousness.

And boy, isn't that indicative of a lot of New Testament doctrines that we understand. That we have no righteousness of our own, we have Jesus's righteousness. It's like we put on his robes of righteousness when we're saved.

And so God rightly so shall be called the Lord, our righteousness, because without him, we have none. And any righteousness we have is his righteousness that he put on us. The Bible says that our sins were placed upon him when he was on the tree, so that his righteousness might be placed upon us.

And that is God's great plan of imputation, where he imputes our sins to Jesus and he died in our place with our sins on him. And then he imputed his righteousness to us so that when the father looks at us, he sees his son and he sees his son's righteousness on us.

And as the old time preacher said, the Lord sees, the father sees us as all dressed up in Jesus. And because of that, we have on the robes of righteousness, we are saved and the father saves us and we're continually and eternally saved because of that.

So rightfully so, we call God, Jehovah Tidkenu, the Lord, our righteousness. In Jeremiah 23, five, it says, "'Behold, the days come,' saith the Lord, "'that I will raise unto David a righteous branch.'".

Now, this is the context that the verse was found in where he was called the Lord, our righteousness. It was prophesied that, "'I will raise unto David a righteous branch "'and a king shall reign and prosper "'and shall execute justice in the earth.

"'In his days, Judah will be saved "'and Israel shall dwell safely. "'And this is his name whereby he will be called "'the Lord, our righteousness.'". And this is where this Hebrew name is found, Jehovah Tidkenu.

"'Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, "'that they shall no more say, the Lord lives, "'which brought up the children of Israel "'out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord liveth, "'which brought up and which led the seed "'of the house of Israel out of the north country "'and from all countries, whether I have driven them "'and they shall dwell in their own land.'".

Now, this is such fascinating prophecy because God himself said the day will come where nobody says, the Lord lives, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. People won't say that anymore because God brought them up out of Egypt and put them in the promised land in Israel, where modern Israel is now, only it was quite a bit bigger than what the world considers Israel now.

But God put them there and they used to say, the children of Israel, they came out of Egypt and now they're in the promised land. They said that for millennia. And God said, there'll come a day when they don't say that.

What they will say is, I brought up Israel out of the north country and from all the other countries where I've driven them. And after 70 AD, after Jesus Christ was crucified and the Jews played a huge role in that, so did the Romans, Jew and Gentile played a role in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

He was resurrected, ascended into heaven. And 40 years later, Titus and the Roman legions came through and destroyed Jerusalem. Destroyed the Jewish religion because they haven't offered a sacrifice since that day.

Actually, since the day Jesus died, they haven't offered a sacrifice. And all of that was gone and then they were scattered into the world. The Jews were scattered into every nation in the world, just like they are right now.

And even though they have a nation again, the huge majority of them don't live in that nation. They live in Russia, they still live in Germany, some of them different points of Europe, South America, huge numbers of them in New York City and all across America in every nation of the world.

And God prophesied that there'll be a day when you say, oh, I brought Israel out of all those nations back to the land and that is just about to happen because that is the next phase on God's timetable is the attempted destruction of Israel and Jesus Christ saving them with the sword of his mouth and then setting up his kingdom for a thousand years in Israel and all the nations of the world will come to the Jews to learn about God and all of that, all of that's coming and this is what they will say.

So, God will be called the Lord, our righteousness and we can call him that now because we have the prophecy and that's who he is, God never changes anyway, does he? So, he's always been that but he certainly is as we understand this.

Now, I can tell you this, I'm 69 years old, I have followed every war that modern Israel has had with great interest because my mentor was a Jew, he's a Jewish believer, Rocky Freeman and he used to get publications straight from Israel that no one here got from the military learning things that were going on behind the scenes in Israel and he'd let me read them.

But I can say this, I have never seen a time since Hitler, since we got into the modern era and the UN and all of that, World War II, we won it, so we became the superpower. There aren't three superpowers, there's one, it's the United States right now, that's changing but so far, it's still that way for a day or two.

I mean, it could end in a day. I wish I could tell you everything I know about that going on right now but it might take up too much time. But I can tell you a couple of things. Right now, if you look in the Pacific, where China is and Guam and all the different islands we took in World War II and they're ours now and we have military bases there with some of the most sophisticated jets and missiles that any humans ever made, the United States made them.

You can't even see them coming. By the time you're dead, you never knew the jet was there if it shot you, fired a missile at you, you didn't even know it was there because it's a stealth fighter. But guess what?

We haven't built hardened shelters for those stealth fighters on Guam and different places. China, all of their fighters are in hardened shelters which means if we bomb them, it won't even hurt the jets.

If they could send in one day or one night, they could send one flurry of missiles at Guam and other places and destroy 90 of our Air Force. Right now, and a Republican who's on the House Committee for Defense of America, specifically with regard to China, wrote a paper about it and provided it to the entire Congress and the President of the United States and said the President of the United States is amiss at defending our people and equipment in those areas and they could be destroyed in one night.

That's where we stand today as America because anytime you have a Democrat in office as President, they defund the military, defund the police, and they pull money out and they build down the military and so they can give more money to people that aren't working, to people, whoever they wanna give it to, let people get an education, never have to pay their debt back.

And that teaches them great things, doesn't it? Great character, not to have to pay the debt back. All these things they're doing eats up that money so they can't spend it on the military. And so I read another article, I'm not gonna go into that one, it was even scarier this week, about our military, the state of our military right now.