What A Mighty God We Serve Series

Sunday March 2nd, 2008

Series: the Fight part 9 Conclusion

Scripture: Psalm 24:7-10

Sermon: What a Mighty God We Serve

Speaker: Pastor Michael West

For nine weeks now, I have been teaching you to fight. To end complacency. To end passivity. To stand up and take back. To move ahead, forward, into the realm of the spiritual. I have been teaching on war. War against an unseen enemy. To help you understand his devices and how sneaky he really is. Now, this is the conclusion. This is graduation. This is the day of no more excuse making, it is a day of victory. It is a day to fight.

Our nation has been under spiritual and physical attacks and God is calling His church to rise up, grow up, step up and take up the sword of the Spirit and fight for the future.

It is possible for us to see our neighborhoods, our city, our towns, our state, even our great nation, turn away from it’s sins and aggressively turn toward heaven. Nineveh did. It is happening now, but we aren’t there yet. We will have to war.

Is America not the most influential nation on the planet, yet consider how god could use our land in Hollywood experienced a revival and our government became a model of integrity and justice. The key, don’t doubt. In the early 1990’s crime was big, but a movement began. Prayer and unity started to happen within the church and though crime is high, something amazing is happening, violent crime has decreased approximately ten percent since then.

Since 1995, teen sex and pregnancy has dropped significantly and for all the reasons you will hear, one is true, prayer is changing things.

Psalm 144:12-15

I hope some of the things you have heard and learned have helped. I hope you have a new zeal, a refreshed anointing. If we persevere, we will see great days ahead. I know some might think, I heard this and that, or I don’t get it. But that is reminiscent of the enemy’s tactics, to blind us in the reality of the righteous wars against evil and the authority we have been given by Jesus, to represent Christ in all the earth.

I know we are not supposed to be fearful, but an encounter with the living God or His angels is a terrifying experience. Somehow Christians have got this picture of God as being a cross between a fat happy Buddha and jolly, kind, Santa Claus.

Note I didn’t say a bad experience, I said terrifying. God isn’t out to scare us; it just happens. In the Bible whenever a person saw the Lord or an angel—even a glimpse of God’s power—that individual instinctively passed out or fell out.

What do we always hear them say? “Do not be afraid.” and it’s always right after the initial encounter. The typical phrase that we hear today—goose bumps—no, it was, they fell down as if dead.

Through the work of the enemy, one revelation of God in the Old Testament is often hidden from our understanding and that is the divine nature revealed in the compound names of God.

Some familiar ones are: Yahweh-Nissi—the Lord is My Banner, Yahweh-Jirah—My Provider, Yahweh-Rapha—the Lord My Healer.

Approximately thirty different occasions the Lord unites His eternal nature to the human need of His servant. However, there is one name that stands apart from these and occurs around two-hundred and ninety times in the Bible. That’s almost ten times the sum of all the others. The name? Yahweh-Sabaoth—the Lord of Hosts or the God of the Armies. This name is revealed to us more than any other.

Joshua 5:14 — Who met Joshua on the field of battle? The Lord of Hosts. It was the God of the Armies that led David into battle against the Philistines—I Samuel 17:45

If we are going to be successful, we must see the Lord as the Lord of Host, the God of the Armies of heaven, the Commander, the Master of the universe—Revelation 19:14

The enemy has seeded false images of these armies into our thought-life to weaken our understanding of their power and might. Every winter millions pull out their Christmas decorations, take out the treetop angel, get it in position and plug it in. Most are blond white women with wings and long dress who lights up when the tree is complete.

They are the furthest thing from the truth. Angels in the Bible are always depicted in a masculine form, even with masculine names, as a symbol of strength.

—Go to Zechariah chapter 5

These aren’t angels, but symbols of wickedness. Angels are fierce warriors of righteousness, they are clothed in light and mighty in battle.

It’s possible that angels have appeared to Christians in a feminine form, comforting on special occasions, but there are no references to feminine angles in the Bible. There are no Gerber baby angels depictions in the Bible, cute and harmless or is cupid, depending on which mythology you look at, Greek he is known as Eros, the son of Aphrodite—goddess of love. His name Eros means self love by the way. Or the Roman belief that he was the son of Venus.