In a book entitled “The Story of the Iron Gate,” writer and pastor Clarence J. Forsbery retells a story about something that happened in a little fishing village on the New England coast. One winter’s day a storm came up suddenly while the boats were out at sea. The men rowed desperately to reach the safety of the harbor. Everyone made it except for one old man named John. He had almost reached the mouth of the harbor when a great wave came along and dashed his small fishing boat against a rock. John managed to pull himself up on to a tiny ledge and hang on for dear life.
His friends saw what happened. Sadly, there wasn’t anything that they could do about it. It was growing dark and the seas were high so it wasn’t safe to put out another boat to go rescue John. All they could do was wait. They built a bonfire on the shore and kept it burning all night. Every once in a while, someone would throw his hat up into the air hoping that the old man would see it.
At last dawn began to break and the winds began to die down. They put out their boats and were able to get close enough to rescue John and bring him safely back to shore.
When the old man had been warmed by the fire and had been given something to eat, they asked him what it was like out there. “Well,” he said, “it was the longest night of my life. I made out pretty well at first … but then a big wave came along and flattened me out and I felt myself slipping. I was worn out … ready to give up. My old father went down at sea and I had decided that my time had come too. But, just as I was ready to let go, I looked through the darkness and saw somebody’s cap going up in the air. I said to myself, ‘If there’s somebody who cares enough about Old John to stay out on a night like this, I guess I’m not going to quit yet.’ Just then the wind seemed to ease up, and I got a fresh hold, and … well … here I am.”
Someone’s cap being tossed in the air … the glimpse of a flag in the heat of a battle … symbols of hope … symbols of perserverance. On September 13, 1864, a young United States attorney general secured permission to board a British warship in an attempt to arrange the release of an American prisoner being detained onboard. He was forced to stay overnight on the ship because of a battle that was being waged in the harbor. From his vantage point on the deck of the British warship, the lawyer witnessed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, which guarded the entrance to Baltimore.
As the battle raged on into the night, he strained to see if he could catch a glimpse of the American flag. The red glow of exploding ammunition would illuminate Old Glory for a second or two. When the grey dawn finally broke, the morning seemed to wash away the smoke from Ft. McHenry and the silver stars and red stripes stood proudly as a symbol of hope and courage and determination.
The young lawyer … Francis Scott Key … was so moved that he pulled out an old letter from his pocket and wrote these stirring words on the back of the letter:
O say, can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose broad strips and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O’er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave.
As Americans, we are proud of our banner … Old Glory. But as Christians, we have a much greater banner … “Jehovah Nissi” … that is revealed to us here in our text this morning. As Francis Scott Key’s song … The Star-Spangled Banner … so strongly suggests, flags and banners play an important role during times of war and national crisis. The same was true for the Israelites during the time of the Exodus. Exodus 17 describes the very first battle that the Israelites had to fight since they left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea.
In Exodus 14, Moses raised his staff and the newly liberated Hebrew slaves passed through the Red Sea dry as a bone. When Moses lowered his staff, the water came crashing back and drowned Pharaoh’s army.
In Chapter 15, the newly liberated Israelites go from singing and praising God to grumbling and complaining because they have run out of water. To be fair, I’d be a bit of a whinner and complainer if I were stranded in the middle of the desert without water. When the Israelites finally find some water it turns out to be bitter … like the Israelites … until God told Moses to throw a stick into the water and it became sweet.
We have spent so much time in the Book of Exodus over the last several weeks because that’s where we hear many of the names of God for the first time. God uses this time in the desert to show the Israelites … and us … what it means and what it will be like to be God’s people.
In Chapter 16, the Israelites commence grumbling and complaining again. This time it’s because they are hungry. Jehovah Jireh provides for their daily needs … raining down bread from heaven every morning … except on the Sabbath … and causing meat … in the form of quail … to fall from the sky for their evening meal.
In Chapter 17, the people are once again on the move … and once again, they begin grumbling and complaining to Moses: “Give us water to drink” (v.2). When they accuse Moses of bringing them out into the desert to die, Moses cries out to God in total desperation: “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me” (v. 4).
God instructs Moses to take some of the elders and go ahead of the people … “take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile … I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink” (v. 5-6). When Moses struck the rock with his staff, water did, indeed, come gushing out. The Bible goes on to say that Moses called the place “Mas’ah” … which means “test” … and “Meribah” … which means “quarrel.” “Is the LORD among us or not?” Moses demands. In essence, they had doubted “Jehovah Shammah” … the God who is there … and they had doubted “Jehovah Jireh” … the God who provides.
The Israelites reached the city of “Rephidim” … which means “to rest or stay” … and set up camp. While they were “resting” and replenishing their water supply, they were attacked by an Amalekite raiding party. The Amalekites were a nomadic tribe who lived in the desert regions of the Sinai Peninsula and the Negev … which is the southern part of present-day Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, the Amalekites were bitter foes of the Israelites whom the Amalekites saw as invaders who were basically trying to steal their lands. The Amalekites were used to roaming and raiding throughout the region. As much as the Amalekites may have resented the intrusion of the Israelites, the presence of the Israelites also gave them more people to raid.
The Amalekites were named after their King … Amalek. You see, Abraham had a son named Isaac … and Isaac had two sons … Esau and Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons who became the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob’s brother, Esau, had two sons. The eldest was Eliphaz. Care to guess the name of Esau’s other son? Yep … Amalek.
As you may recall, Jacob had tricked Esau out of his birthright. Even though Esau and Jacob later reconciled, the bitterness and resentment were still there. The Amalekites had gone a long way out of their way to go after God’s people because Rephidim wasn’t any place near where they lived. Their goal was to harasses the Israelites and keep them from reaching Canaan … the Promised Land … and establishing themselves as a nation and a power in that region.
Here’s the sad part … and it goes to show you what bitterness and anger can do to you … if they had sat back and thought about it for moment, the Amalekites would have realized that they were as much descendants of Abraham as Jacob’s family … which meant that they would have inherited the promises that God made to Abraham if they had followed Yahweh like Abraham and Jacob did. Instead, they drew God’s wrath by attacking His chosen ones.
When the Israelites hear that the Amalekites are approaching Rephidim to attack them, Moses orders the army to assemble and they go out and engage the Amalekites in battle … the first of many battles that the Israelites and Amalekites would fight against each other.
While Joshua is leading the battle, Moses, Aaron, and Hur watch the battle from on top of a hill … but they are doing much more than just watching, aren’t they? They are rallying the troops. “As long as Moses held up his hand,” says verse 11, “the Israelites were winning but whenever [Moses] lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.” When the Israelite soldiers saw the staff they knew that God was with them … and that visual symbol was a reminder that God would give them strength to fight on and win the day. As long as Moses’ hands were raised in a posture of praise and adoration, the Israeli troop could trust that God was with them. The staff symbolized how God had come through for them before and how He would do so now. It was both a sign and a pledge of God’s Presence. Whenever the Israelites got tired, the Amalekites would start to gain the advantage. Whenever the Israelites looked at the raised staff in Moses’ hand, however, it reminded them of the mighty arm of El Shaddai, and they would gain renewed strength and hope because they knew that God was with them.
Here’s the principle. The Israelites were to fight with all their might but they were to never take their eyes off Jehovah. They were God’s soldiers … fighting under His command.
In verse 12, the Bible says that Aaron and Hur had to help Moses when he got too tired to stand. Remember … the guy’s 80 years old. They find a stone for Moses to sit on and then they prop up Moses’ hands so that they remain steady until the long battle was won. To commemorate their victory and honor God, Moses built an altar at the site of the battle and called it … “Jehovah Nissi” … “The LORD is My Banner.”
I have to pause here to make a point that I don’t want you to miss. In order to understand the significance of the name “Jehovah Nissi,” you must understand the significance of Moses’ rod or staff. When God first spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, He commanded Moses to throw his staff on the ground. When he did, Moses’ staff turned into a serpent. Moses ran away from it but God told him to pick it up the tail where upon it became a stick again. This was a teachable moment for Moses. As we read in Exodus 4:5, God tells Moses that He turned Moses’ staff into a snake “so that you may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers … the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob … has appeared to you.” From then on, whenever Moses held up his staff, he was reminded that the powerful presence of God was with him. When God used that same staff to send plagues upon the Egyptians … when God used that same staff to part the Red Sea and drown Pharaoh’s army … when Moses struck the rock and life-giving water gushed out … when he held his staff aloft and their army defeated the Amalekites … the Israelites also learned the same lesson. This staff was no magic wand. It represented something far greater than magic tricks or sleight of hand. It represented the holy hand and awesome arm of Yahweh. This was God’s way of showing them that He was with them and that He was going to do battle for them when their backs were up against the wall. The rod of God became the focal point of God’s people … a “banner.”
When opposing armies face off for battle, they often carry a flag at the front of the army to rally their troops. I remember seeing how prominent the different flags were during the Revolutionary War re-enactments that I saw when my family would visit Williamsburg. When the flag moves … the troops move. When the soldiers see their flag fluttering proudly in the breeze, they take heart … they take courage. The sight of the flag gives them hope … like it did Frances Scott Key. Flags also bring the army together … giving it a sense of identity and unity.
They didn’t use cloth flags in Old Testament times. They used a pole or a staff as their “banner.” The symbol of Rome’s power was not a flag … it was a bronze eagle perched atop a staff. The symbol of Israel’s power at this point was Moses’ walking stick or shepherd’s staff.
I mentioned the “banner” of our country earlier … the Stars and Strips. The flag has no power by itself … it’s just colorful pieces of cloth sewn together. What the flag does, however, is represent the power behind it. It reminds us of the one whose power and resources are at our disposal. In the case of the Red, White, and Blue, it represents the power, the history, the people, and the resources of America. When believers gather under the banner of God, we are saying that we have God’s power, God’s history, God’s people, and God’s resources backing us up.
When you take away the banner of God … Jehovah Nissi … from this country, what you get is what we’re beginning to see now … a country of gangs and pirates all sailing under their own flags … Democrat, Republican, Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Antifa, BLM, LGBTQ … so many flags. We are no longer “ONE nation under God.”
“One nation under God.” How many of our young people today don’t recognize that phrase or even know where it comes from. I remember when we had an American flag in every classroom. I remember facing that flag every morning before school started and pledging my allegiance to the country that it represented. When was the last time that YOU said “The Pledge of Allegiance”? Put your right hand over your heart and join with me now in reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance.” [Recite The Pledge of Allegiance.]
America’s spiritual foundation was laid by godly men and women … beginning with the Pilgrims and Puritans who left Europe in order to practice their Biblical faith freely. Starting with the Mayflower Compact in 1620 and continuing with the chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the founders of this country labored to build a new civilization based on Biblical principles … dedicated to God’s purposes. In the words of Puritan leader John Wintrop, America was to become “a city … a beacon on a hill” for the rest of the world.
As America’s forerunners embraced the God of the Bible, they increasingly identified with the people of the Bible and the covenant that God made with His people at Mt. Sinai. According to religious historians Gabriel Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan: “[The early settlers and founders of this country] believed their own lives [were] a literal re-enactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nation. They [saw themselves] as the children of Israel … America was their Promised Land. The Pact of Plymouth Rock was God’s covenant; [they saw themselves as a people chosen to build their new commonwealth on the covenant entered into at Sinai” (2002. “Strong Religion.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 131).
The Pilgrim’s celebration of thanksgiving, for example, was based on the Old Testament’s “Festival of Sukkot” or “Feast of Tabernacles.” The roots of New England law were influenced by the Jewish law and Hebrew scriptures. America’s first colleges … such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton … were established to train ministers of God’s word.
God was acknowledged as America’s ultimate King. He ruled through His Law … with a capital “L” … with no earthly king above the law any more than any earthly king was above God. This argument against tyranny led to the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and a brand-new Republic enjoying the blessings of liberty.
Examining 15,000 pieces of late-eighteenth-century American political literature, American historian Donald Lutz found that the Bible was cited far more often than any other writing. In the 19th Century, President Andrew Jackson called the Word of God “the rock on which our Republic rests” … and Abraham Lincoln made numerous positive references to God and the Bible throughout his presidency and often spoke about the judgment of God upon this nation. In the 20th Century, President Harry S. Truman noted: “The fundamental basis for this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the mount” (Lutz, D. 1998. Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History, ed. Donald S. Lutz. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
American history is impossible to understand without understanding its founding vision to be a “city on a hill” and a light to the nations. As American sought to fulfill this vision, it was blessed more than any other nation in the world. By the end of the 18th Century, it had won its independence from England, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth at that time, and it ratified the most amazing political document ever written … the Constitution of the United States. By the end of the 19th Century, the United States spanned an entire continent. In the 20th Century, the United States had become the world’s most powerful nation … both economically and militarily.
America has blessed the world by sending out more missionaries … by welcoming more refugees … by producing more food and other essentials … by creating more technological marvels … and defeating more tyrants … fascist and communist alike … than any other country in history. America was instrumental in blessing the Jewish people by providing them refuge during World War II and then recognizing and supporting the birth and development of the Nation of Israel. God honored His pledge in Genesis 12:3 to bless those who bless His people.
America and its people were never without sin but spiritual revivals kept bringing America back to God and to His Word … giving birth to major reform movements like the drive to abolish slavery. From the days of the Puritans onward, America’s forerunners warned us about what would happen if America turned firmly from her foundations and turned against God. John Adams warned: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” (Lutz, 1998). And yet, despite these warnings, America has repeated the pattern of Israel’s northern Kingdom … and is, I believe, experiencing an equally dramatic moral and spiritual decline.
The seeds were sown nearly a century ago when the leaders of America’s historic churches began to embrace radical skepticism and began to doubt that the Bible was the infallible word of God. These seeds grew into a belief that “religion” was a private, subjective matter and not an objective, public concern. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to ban public prayer in school … the first of a series of major steps taken to drive God out of the nation’s public life.
As respect for God’s Word and ways declined, so has America’s culture. The assault on the American family began with welfare and rising divorce rates … sky-rocketing out-of-wedlock births … and finally … the recent push to re-define marriage, family, and sin itself.
Across society, the desire for ceaseless entertainment and instant gratification has eroded self-discipline and values … fueled an explosion in pornography, sexual promiscuity, and drug addiction … and the revival of pagan occult practices under the “banner” of the New Age movement. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decreed “abortion on demand” the law of the land. Just as Israel sacrificed thousands of its children on the altars of Molach and Ba’al, so now America sacrifices millions of unborn children on the altar of personal choice.
Christians and others who protest this rising tide are increasingly mocked, ridiculed, marginalized, and ostracized. As Israel had done thousands of years ago, we now call good “evil” and evil “good.” What happened in ancient Israel is now happening in America. Our nation has forgotten its godly beginnings … seeking and trusting in the world’s blessings rather than the God of All Blessing. Today Israel’s ancient northern kingdom is but a footnote in history … and I fear that without revival and restoration and repentance, we risk a similar fate.
We’ve gone from being “one nation under God, indivisible” to a country under many flags and banners with no way to come together … no uniting concept or belief … no meeting of the heart and soul. No longer do we see ourselves as “one nation under God, indivisible” where we can agree to disagree and still remain brothers and sisters at the end of the day because we all see ourselves as “one nation under God, indivisible” … Americans united under a common cause and common hope of liberty and freedom under the protection and care of El Elyon, EL Shaddai, Jehovah Nissi.
One of the most famous “banners” in the Old Testament is found in Numbers 21. This time it’s not water or food or raiding bands of Nomads that are the problem but poisonous snakes who are plaguing God’s people. After confessing their sins, the LORD told Moses to make a “fiery serpent” and put it on a pole. Whoever looked as this “banner” would live … so you can bet that the Israelites stayed close to the fiery serpent and kept an attentive eye on that banner, amen?
Jesus picks up on this image later in John 3 when Nicodemus beings to ask Him questions about what he needs to do to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells him that he must be “born again” … and then, to drive the point home, Jesus tells him: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, [so] the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).
Jesus is Jehovah Nissi … the Banner of Salvation. He was lifted up on a piece of wood on a hill, bringing victory over sin and Satan and death to all who believe in Him. Those who look to Him will be saved.
I want to close with this story. During World War II a passenger ship set sail from Great Britain headed for port in New York City. Justifiably worried and afraid of enemy vessels, the captain of the ship sought the advice and guidance of a British admiral. The admiral calmly assured the captain that no matter what happened, he should be sure to sail his ship straight ahead. “Do not take any detours. Sail the ship straight ahead … continue on-ward, heading straight towards the intended mark,” the admiral advised him.
After sailing for several days, the Atlantic Ocean was undeniably filled with submarines and enemy vessels of all kind. The captain spotted an enemy destroyer off his forward bow. Nervously he grasped the headset and call for assistance. A calm voice replied: “Keep going straight. Do not detour. Just sail the ship straight ahead. Everything will be just fine. Just keep on going straight ahead.”
After a couple more anxious days, the ship pulled safely into the great harbor of New York City. Shortly after docking, the great British warship Man-O-War pulled into port behind the passenger ship and docked. It was then that the captain realized that the British battleship was always there … standing by … ready to come to his defense should it prove necessary … even though he couldn’t see it and had no idea that it was there … following along behind them.
Jehovah Nissi … God is Our Banner. Whose flag are you flying today? Are you rallied around the rebel flag of the nation of “Me?” I don’t know what you’re going through or who your Amalekites are but I can assure you that God will give you the victory if you will look to Him and wave the white flag of total surrender to Him … Jehovah Nissi … Our Banner, amen?
Let us pray:
