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January, 2024 (Vol.58-No.1) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on January 7, 1990 The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it , and is safe. Proverbs 18:10 TURN IN YOUR BIBLE TO PROVERBS 18. This chapter is full of good subjects to preach on. Verse 8 says, “The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” Verse 9 says, “He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster.” Verse 12 says, “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility.” Verse 16 says, “A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.” Verse 21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” And verse 24 says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” God is not like most preachers, because all of His sermon topics are good. But some are timelier than others. Certain Bible passages leap out and grab us in specific circumstances, while others grab us in all circumstances. Proverbs 18 is one of those wellsprings of inspiration, and right in the middle of it is the verse I am preaching on today: Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” Let’s look at some alternative translations in The Word: The Bible from 26 Translations. Young’s Literal Translation says, “A tower of strength is the name of Jehovah, into it the righteous runneth, and is set on high.” The New Berkeley Version says, “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; into it runs the righteous and cannot be touched.” Helen Spurrell translated it, “The Name of JEHOVAH is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is secure.” Ronald Knox translated it, “No stronghold like the Lord’s name; there the just take refuge, high above reach.” This same truth is taught in Isaiah 50:10, which begins, “Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?” The one who “feareth the LORD,” in the Old Testament sense, recognizes and respects God’s rights over him. The one who “obeyeth the voice of his servant: hears and responds to the teaching of God’s word. So this verse does not describe a rebellious runaway from God. Yet the very same person who fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant can find himself walking in darkness and having no light. As I have preached in previous messages, valleys of weeping and interludes of darkness are part of the Christian journey. What does Isaiah tell us to do in those circumstances? “Let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.” V. Raymond Edman said that when you find yourself in darkness, “Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.” Proverbs 18:10 adds the specific result of trusting in the name of the Lord: “The righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” That is how it reads in the King James Version. The other translations help bring us closer to the heart of its meaning: the name of the Lord certainly provides safety, but more than that, it is a stronghold high above the reach of darkness and threats. Let’s talk about the “name of the LORD.” The Hebrew word translated “LORD” is YHWH, the four-letter name of God known as the tetragrammaton. The closest we can come to pronouncing it is Yahweh. It is often translated by the name Jehovah. God has many names in the Bible. The book of Genesis opens, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Here, the Hebrew word translated “God” is Elohim, which is a plural word derived from an ancient name of God, El, meaning “mighty.” Before Moses began to fulfill his role as the deliverer for the children of Israel in Egypt’s bondage, God appeared to him and said, in essence, “I have been known by My name God Almighty, but to you and My chosen people, I will reveal Myself as Jehovah.” As His oracle, God’s people were custodians to communicate that knowledge to the whole world. In a previous message, I used a pictorial illustration to give us a sense of the meaning of the name Jehovah. Imagine taking a garden hose, turning on the spigot, and pinching the hose until you feel the water pressure building up behind your fingers. When you release your grip, the water gushes out. The name Jehovah conveys the impression of God’s nature, under pressure, waiting to burst forth and be seen. And by this name Jehovah, God revealed what He wants to be for His people. He shined forth a revelation of Himself. It is a tragedy that the Jewish people took that very name and covered it up. To this day, when they read the Scriptures, they will not even pronounce the name. They substitute a lesser name, Adonai, which simply means “my Lord.” But God intended to reveal Himself through the name Yahweh or Jehovah. The name Jehovah is combined with other words to form names of God that are specific in their application. For example, God is named Jehovah-jireh, the Lord who sees and provides. He first revealed Himself this way to Abraham. He revealed Himself as Provider to the children of Israel as they marched through the wilderness. God provided them with water from a flinty rock and He rained down manna from heaven. God is named Jehovah-nissi, the Lord is our Banner; Jehovah-shalom, the Lord is our Peace; Jehovah-tsidkenu, the Lord is our Righteousness; Jehovah-shammah, the Lord is there; Jehova-rohi, the Lord is our Shepherd; and Jehovah-rapha, the Lord is our Healer. Each of these names reveals something about God’s nature. Everywhere the name Jehovah is encountered, God is seeking to reveal Himself to His people. But God is sovereign: He will do what He wills. We must never take God’s word and use it against Him. Faith means acting on His promises whether or not we see the results. Unless we are acting in faith, we will not receive His power in our lives. By analogy, if you want to use an electrical appliance, you must first plug its cord into an outlet. The current will not flow if you merely think about plugging it in. The act of faith plugs in the cord, so to speak. God will not relinquish His sovereignty: He will not allow us to take over the universe with our limited understanding of His words. But the release of His power in our lives is nonetheless dependent upon our acts of faith. Faith means acting on God’s word in spite of every circumstance that contradicts it. Suppose you are in need of healing. God does not need to find a reason to heal you: it is His nature to heal. It was to a disobedient people that God revealed Himself as Jehovah-rapha: “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” He does not have to be talked into healing you, any more than He has to be talked into forgiving you. He declared in Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” He heals and forgives by His nature, and He reveals His nature through His names. Some psychologists tell people to lie on a couch and talk for a long time until they finally reveal their true nature. God has already spoken to us for centuries and revealed His nature to us. When we come to know someone very well, we are able to say, “That’s just the way he is” or “That’s the way she is.” The Bible teaches us the way God is. I preached on Psalm 84, translating verse 5 as “Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, and in whose heart are the ways of Thee.” God is always with you, in your valleys and out of them. The Jehovah names were used by God as the channel by which He would reveal Himself to His chosen people. We men and women of faith are the chosen in Christ today. God places us in Christ and views us as though we are “little Christs” because of our faith in His word. The apostle Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 1:20, “All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen.” All of God’s promises are ours to claim, including the revelation of His names. When you are in darkness and have no light, when you are in a situation that produces so much fear and misery that you must run somewhere to escape its oppressive weight, you can claim this promise in Proverbs 18:10. Read it again, this time replacing the words “the LORD” with the name Jehovah: “The name of Jehovah is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” Let’s deal with the word “righteous.” People who read that word might immediately disqualify themselves and say, “This promise can’t be for me, because I am not righteous enough to deserve it.” How do you become righteous according to the New Testament? You do not become righteous by something you “do.” Rather, righteousness is a gift from God because of your faith. That means the moment you start acting in faith on this verse, you become righteous in God’s sight. That applies to you even if you feel beaten down because of some known sin you have committed. It is probably not nearly as bad as you think it is. I doubt you know how to sin as well as you think you do. God has had a lot of experience with sinners throughout the centuries, and your sin does not surprise Him. Some people are almost proud of their unrighteousness. Regardless of how bad you think your sins are, they are not that big of a deal to God. All the sins of mankind were laid on Christ at the cross. We had better understand that our sins put Him there, but the weight He carried went well beyond the guilt of our sins. One of God’s names is Jehovah-tsidkenu, the Lord is our Righteousness. God gives us the gift of His righteousness for our faith. The problem is our lack of faith. Sometimes Christians claim a promise of God, but they give up if they do not quickly see results. They claim the Lord’s promise of healing, but they get discouraged if they are not healed immediately. What is faith? The Greek word for “faith” is pistis, spelled using English letters. The verbal form is pisteuo. Our English translations have erroneously reduced faith to mere belief. Faith is not mere belief; faith is an action, based upon belief, and sustained by confidence. That is why I have coined some words to reflect the sense of the original Greek words. Instead of “believing,” I say faithing. Instead of “to believe,” I say to faithe. And the person who is acting in faith is a faither. You cannot exist without some kind of faith: you cannot exist without acting on a belief in something. For example, when you get up in the morning, you are acting on the basis of your belief in gravity. You believe that your feet will stay on the floor and that you will not float up to the ceiling. Because of your faith in gravity, you do not even have to think about it. You simply take it for granted. Faith is necessary to life. But faith must have an object. Before the New Testament was written, the word we translate as “faith” could be used to describe any action based on any belief. But God appropriated this word in the New Testament and limited its meaning to any action based upon His word of promise. No other action, whether good or bad, qualifies as biblical faith. When you act in faith, God gives you the gift of His life that saves you. The Bible teaches that Christ is formed in your heart by faith. Many traditional churches teach that you start by faith, but after you take your first steps, they say you must keep the law in order to stay saved. The book of Hebrews says that you remain the habitation of God if you continue the same way you started, faithing all throughout your journey. God’s word of promise gives us hope. We hope in something that is not yet seen; we claim it as a promise. But when a promise of God becomes a fact, it is no longer a promise and is no longer a hope. When a promise becomes a fact, the book of Hebrews says we have obtained “rest.” Hebrews 4:9 says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Literally, there remains a ”sabbath-keeping” or a sabbathing, in which you rest from your own labors and claim the finished work of Christ. You are sabbathing every time you act on a promise of God and rely on His faithfulness. God’s promises give hope to those who believe that His word is forever settled in heaven and who have the confidence to act on His word. As I have gotten older, it has become hard for me to preach this message, because I would like to reach a stage where all the promises of God are behind me and I no longer have to face any challenges. I want to be able to tell people that if they would follow my teaching, they too will one day sit where I sit without needing to walk by faith anymore. Sorry, but that is not what the Bible teaches. God is preparing us for eternity. That is the primary benefit of being in a circumstance that demands faith. You receive God’s life in response to your grabbing a promise of God and acting on it in spite of everything you see. I call this “hanging your body” on God’s word. Yesterday’s faith will not work for today; every day, you must have a challenge of faith that brings you to a point where you must grab a promise of God and act on it. If you are not acting in faith today, you are disconnected from God; you have unplugged the cord from the outlet. Funadamentalists have accused me of making Christianity too easy, because I do not preach about their traditional rules of behavior. They do not like that I smoke a cigar and sometimes listen to popular music. I tell my congregation that they should be salt in the world and that they do not have to be a freak to be a Christian. The church I pastor is not like many traditional churches: there is no men’s fellowship or ladies’ gossip society. I do not tell musicians that they must stop performing in nightclubs nor do I tell artists that they must never paint a nude. But the fundamentalists mischaracterize me. I do not make Christianity easy; I simply remove the junk that means nothing to God. Unless you are challenging your circumstances by claiming a promise of God, you have lost your connection to Him. When you act in faith, God puts His Spirit in you and places you in Christ. That is the primary benefit of faithing. The greatest threat to your spiritual existence and your eternal life are those rare times when God quickly responds to your faith and fulfills His promise. Those are times when God, in His sovereignty, makes His promise into a fact at that moment. When you are basking in the victory of having obtained the object of your faith, you can lose your reason to faithe. The moment such a victory comes, you had better find another object of faith in a hurry, because you are in a danger zone. You are also at risk if you become bitter as a result of faithing in a promise not fulfilled. Satan always tries to exploit such times as the death of a loved one, the breakdown of a family, a bankruptcy, or some other tragedy that seems to defy God’s power to keep His word. But God will not release His sovereignty. He will not cease being God in order to prove to you that He is God. He is faithful to His word, and He has the eternal perspective. The proper objective of faith is the eternal reward. By acting in faith, you receive God’s grace and you remain in Christ. Your particular trail was created or allowed by God in His sovereignty. Whatever promise you have claimed becomes an instrument of your salvation. But the same words bring life to some and death to others. How you survive your trial will tell that story. The Scripture says that by faith we understand that God spoke and nothing became everything. Thus the Speaker of the word and the word He has spoken are more solid and substantial than the things created by that word. Every Christian stands at this crossroad every day of his life. I must ask myself: Will I look at the circumstances and let them bend my view of God’s word? Or will I look at God’s word and be willing to die defying the circumstances and declaring, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven?” That fixed focus puts us in Christ and puts Christ in us, which is the means of our salvation. Some people find it easy to agree with this idea in principle, until they find themselves having to live their commitment. You will find yourself in situations where God does not immediately give you what you thought you should have received. You can fool your fellow Christians, but you cannot fool God. It is possible to entertain resentment toward God and be disappointed with Him for letting you down. God knows our hearts better than we do, and He is able to discern when people start berating Him for not keeping His promises. We often pray to receive something that is not in submission to His will and His glory, because as the Bible says, we want to consume it upon our own lusts. That is, we want something from God only to satisfy our own desires. Like spoiled brats rationalizing ourselves blind, we want the Father’s approval of our own plan. But God will not cater to our self-deception. Returning to my earlier analogy of the electrical cord, the act of faith plugs in the cord, regardless of whether God immediately grants us what we have faithed for. Today, we have the promise: “The name of Jehovah is a strong tower” that lifts us up above everything; “the righteous,” the one who acts in faith, “runneth into it, and is safe.” There is nothing inherently wrong with fear. The issue is whether your fear makes you run from God or turn to God. David said, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Courage is not the absence of fear; courage defies and defeats the fear by coming against it. Proverbs 18:10 makes it clear that the righteous get into threatening circumstances where they need to run to a refuge that makes them secure and lifts them up above it all. John Donne has said that God’s word is like a great tree with many branches that can provide comfort and shade for everyone. In the Jehovah names, God has revealed Himself as able to meet whatever specific need you have today. God’s names are very specific in their application. You might say, “But I don’t think the Lord knows how desperate my situation is!” God knows. The name Jehovah-jireh is used in Genesis 22, when God told Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him on an altar. That was Abraham’s “reward” for his faith! Let’s follow Abraham’s journey. He was originally named Abram. God told him to separate from his family and from his country. He separated from his country, but he did not make the full severance and commitment, because he took his father and his nephew Lot with him. Abram might be criticized for not fully obeying God. He halted at a place called Haran and remained there until the death of his father, who lacked the faith that Abram had. Then Abram journeys from Haran and arrived at a place called Sichem or Shechem, which is called Nablus in modern Israel. The Lord appeared to him there and said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” God essentially told him, “This is the place where I have sent you.” Abram traveled a little farther and came to a place near Beth-el. He pitched his tent in the valley between two mountains that would later be called the Mount of Cursing and the Mount of Blessing, and there he built an altar unto the Lord. Abram had traveled across wastelands, seeking a city about which he knew nothing; God was going to show him when he got there. But when he arrived at the place where God had sent him, God promptly sent a famine in the land to defy the promise! Overcome by the famine, Abram fled to Egypt, where he got into trouble. Then he returned to the land that God had promised him, and God started over with him there. God told him, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art…for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” He had just lost the well-watered plains to Lot. God then promised him, “I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy see also be numbered.” God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude,” but he had no children. Abraham and his wife Sarah were both too old to have children, so they set out to accomplish God’s will without His help. Sarah told Abraham to take her maidservant and have a child by her, and Ishmael was born. It took no miracle of God to produce Ishmael! God again promised Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a child, but they both laughed at the thought. Finally, after more years of training, more disappointments, and more of faith’s achievements, the miracle child, Isaac, was born to Abraham and Sarah. Put yourself inside this flesh-and-blood man and trace his learning experiences. Abraham finally received what he had desired the most. He probably thought to himself, “Now I know that when you trust in God, you can count on Him to keep His word!” He received something beyond anything we could conceive of in the natural. Have you ever received from God something so wonderful that you proclaimed, “I might have doubted before, but after this experience, I will never doubt again!” If I had been Abraham, I might have prayed, “God, now I know why You put me through all that training. You wanted to bring me to a point where I could spend the rest of my life showing the world how You gave me Isaac!” Modern Christianity has become almost entirely consumed by this notion: people believe that God’s entire purpose is exhausted once they have received their “Isaac,” whatever that means to them. I have just summarized almost every talk show on religious television. People go on those shows to boast “I have become God’s mouthpiece because I have achieved what most of Christianity aims to achieve. I have received my Isaac! And if you hang on long enough, you will receive your Isaac too! And when you do, you won’t need to hang on to anything but your Isaac. ‘Reaching for Isaac’ is a thing of the past. ‘Holding on to Isaac’ is now the pinnacle of Christian achievement.” But this notion is not in accord with Scripture. After Abraham had achieved this milestone of faith, God told him to take his son Isaac, go to a mountain in the land of Moriah, place him on an altar, and kill him! In the New Testament, James pointed to that passage in his attempt to prove that Abraham was justified by his works. But what Abraham did was not “works;” it was an act of faith. James carefully avoided pointing out what Abraham said at the foot of the hill when he knew he was about to go up and sacrifice Isaac by God’s command. In Genesis 22:5, Abraham told his servants, “Abide ye here…I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” A more accurate translation would read, “I and the lad will go up and worship, and we will return to you.” He was certain he would come back down the hill with Isaac. Abraham had finally reached a stage where no circumstance could break his grip on God’s promise. He did not base his trust in the presence of Isaac, but in the Giver of Isaac. In 1st Kings 17, God sent the prophet Elijah to a brook to sustain him, but after a while, the brook dried up. F.B. Meyer said that God was teaching Elijah to trust the Giver of the gifts and not the gifts He had given him. God taught Abraham the same lesson. He and Isaac went up the mountain, and Isaac said, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham replied, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” Abraham would have slain his son, but the angel of the Lord stayed his hand. Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket and offered it as a burnt offering in the place of his son. Then Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah-jireh, the Lord will provide! I do not think any of us has ever been in a position like Abraham’s. He had to reach through the fog of circumstances and grab hold of an eternal truth with the conviction and trust that the Lord would provide. That is why when God saw Abraham’s faith, He said, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.” When will we understand how important faith is to God? God knows our hearts. You say you are grieved by something that has shattered you and brought you to a point where you are ready to question God? When will we understand how that hurts God? And it proves He must put you through more training until your faith becomes a reality rather than an abstract confession in your life. God puts us in darkness to see if we can walk through that darkness by the light of His revelation. He puts us in threatening circumstances to see whether we will run randomly, as so many are doing, or whether we will run to the name of the Lord and be secure therein. God has a name to fit our every circumstance. When the children of Israel journeyed in the wilderness, they came to a place where there was no water to drink. God commanded Moses to strike a rock, and water poured forth. After God provided them water to drink, “Then came Amalek,” who fought against the children of Israel. Moses stood on top of a hill and held up the rod of God in his hand. When his hands were raised, the Israelites prevailed. But when his arms became tired and his hands were lowered, the Amalekites prevailed. But Moses saw God above it all. Like the banners of war that were carried into battle in those days, Moses saw Jehovah-nissi, the Lord is our Banner! Think of our national anthem and see the Stars and Stripes still waving throughout the dark night of battle. The name “the Lord is our Banner” is a statement of faith to declare that God will give us the victory no matter what our circumstances look like! In Judges 6, God called Gideon while he was hiding in fear. Gideon was called to lead the people in a battle against God’s enemies. Gideon started out with 32,000 men, but God reduced the number down to only 300 and gave him the victory. Gideon called on the name of the Lord, Jehovah-shalom, the Lord is Peace! Peace means “cessation of againstness.” Put your hand in God’s hand and he will steer you through the conflict into peace. David was anointed of God, and that was the beginning of his troubles. He was hunted like an animal, and his every move seemed to bring a curse on him. Yet it was David who called on the name of the Lord, Jehovah-rohi, the Lord is my Shepherd! David could sing, “He leadeth me.” The primary focus of our faith is eternal life. Righteousness is God’s gift to us because of our faith. If we focus only on the reality of our circumstances, we will see only darkness and vales of misery. But faith says that God’s word is forever settled in heaven. When God says something, He will do it. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, that he should lie, neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” And Proverbs 18:10 says, “The name of the LORD,” whichever name fits your circumstance, “is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” Let every circumstance be a lie! God is above all, and as you grab His name and make it yours, He will see you through! Say it with me: “We made it through this year, in Jesus’ name!” Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott   January, 2024 - THE NAME OF THE LORD IS A STRONG TOWER (Dr. Gene Scott)
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