This message is one of the Times Square
Church Pulpit Series.
It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times
Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge,
P.O. Box 260, Lindell, Texas 75771, or
calling 903-963-8626.
None of these messages are copyrighted, and you
are welcome to make copies for free distribution
to friends.
Again, welcome all of our visitors, and we
trust you've had an encounter with Jesus already,
and that as we go into the Word,
you will be enriched and changed and healed,
spirit, mind, and body.
Praise God.
If you're visiting New York City, and this
is your first time, and you've been on
these streets and looked around, you see the
challenge that we face here in this city,
and God has been good to help us.
We appreciate your prayers, and we're delighted to
have you.
Don't forget to go to the visitors' rooms,
hospitality room in the annex, and also here
in the main auditorium, because we do have
one of my books and ministry tape, and
also refreshments.
But best of all, some New Yorkers who
would like to answer your questions about the
church, or as much as they can about
the city, and just be welcome.
God bless you.
Delighted to have you in our service this
morning.
Call this this morning Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Jireh.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for this Word,
how we love the Word of God in
this church, how we love, Lord, to go
into your Word and find your heart.
Now, Lord Jesus, you have been opening up
the new covenant to us in this congregation,
and now, Lord, you want to show us
your covenant names.
This is where we get our faith.
That is what this Word is all about.
You'll know the truth, and the truth will
set you free, and this is truth that
frees us from bondage, and fear, and guilt,
and shame.
Oh God, sanctify your Word this morning, sanctify
me to deliver it.
I thank you for what you're saying to
my heart, and Lord, I want everyone in
this place that is in this house today
to hear with a hearing ear.
Holy Spirit, give us a hearing ear, I
pray.
Amen.
Jehovah-Jireh.
In the 14th chapter of Genesis, we have
an account of the first war in human
history, the first war ever mentioned in the
Bible.
There was a confederate army that came against
Sodom and Gomorrah, declared war on Sodom and
Gomorrah, and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah
went out to the Valley of Sidon and
waged war against this confederacy, and they lost.
In fact, the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah
fled to the hills, and the battle was
lost.
The scripture says, and the kings of Sodom
and Gomorrah fled and fell there, and they
took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and all the food supply, and fled, and
they took a lot.
It means that as soon as this confederate
army came, defeated the armies of Sodom and
Gomorrah, they moved into the cities, the twin
cities, and just took everything, out of their
treasures, their gold, silver, their diamonds, their food
supply, everything.
They just took it all, and they took
a lot in his family.
Abraham had 318 in his army.
These were his own servants, and evidently trained
for warfare to protect the interest of Abraham
and his clan.
And they marched 140 miles, caught up with
the army, going back triumphantly to its place,
and suddenly Abraham comes upon it, this army,
and soundly defeats them.
Soundly defeats this army, and recaptures Lot.
And now he's heading back over the north
ridge, just north of Jerusalem, which was then
called Jabez, which is later Jerusalem.
And he's on his way back, and what
a scene this was.
He's got Lot and his family, and he's
got all the spoils.
Not only the spoils of Sodom and Gomorrah,
but the spoils of all the confederated armies
that had come against Sodom and Gomorrah.
And he's heading them back, he's going to
take them all back to Sodom.
I often wonder why God didn't let these
Sodomites just be taken to captivity, and rid
Sodom of it, at least go, just get
Lot out of the bunch, and let the
armies take the Sodomites.
But you see, that's not what, God was
not going to let the devil preempt him.
Judgment had been declared on Sodom and Gomorrah,
and God intended to quarantine Sodom and Gomorrah,
and burn it down so there'd be no
spread of this virus of sodomy.
But the devil's plan was to preempt, and
he brought this army in, captured these so
that the Sodomite virus and disease of homosexuality,
and impospitality, and all of the diseases, moral
decay, would be spread through all of the
known world.
And God stopped the devil in his tracks,
and brought them back, and quarantined them just
before judgment.
Amazing work of God.
On his victorious return now, the battle's been
won, and he needs two kings on his
way back.
These are the two kings you're going to
meet.
Once you give your heart to Jesus, and
you're just rejoicing in the victory you've won,
and by the way, when you come to
Jesus Christ and surrender, you've won a great
victory over the devil.
I mean, you have robbed him of his
spoil.
And so, two kings meet him, the king
of Salem, and the king of Sodom.
Meet him on the way back.
These two kings are going to meet you
as soon as you get right with God.
You're going to meet these two kings, and
we'll talk about it here now.
Every one of us face them, sooner or
later.
Now, Abram is now heading back, and as
he comes to the north side, he's just
passing Jabez, which was later Jerusalem, and the
king of Jabez comes out to meet him.
His name is Melchizedek.
He is king, and he's also the priest
of the city.
Now, this is a very mysterious man, and
there are only three verses here in this
context that describe who this man is.
Very mysterious man.
He's king, and he's priest.
Of course, a type of Christ.
And he comes out to meet Abram, and
the Bible says that he blessed him, and
he served communion to him.
In fact, he served him bread and wine.
He had a covenant meal with Abram, an
amazing visitation.
He's called king of Salem.
Salem is peace, and the earliest name of
Jerusalem was Jeru, and Salem was added later.
I mean, city of peace, Jerusalem.
He's the king of Salem, or Jabez, and
he's also a priest.
There's only two mentions later of this mysterious
man.
In Psalms 110, this is a thousand years
after this episode.
Psalms 110 says, Thou art a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.
And then a hundred or a thousand years
later than that, in Hebrews, we read in
Hebrews 7, 11, speaking of Christ.
Thou art a priest forever after the kind
or order of Melchizedek.
King and priest, Melchizedek.
Mysterious man.
I don't want to get into that.
I don't have time.
That's a message in itself.
But he is a type of Christ.
No question about it.
Abram goes on his way after he meets
king of Salem after they have communion.
And Abram pays ties to this king priest.
Further down the road, he meets the king
of Sodom.
The king of Sodom was enraged.
No doubt.
He's he represents Satan himself.
And you see, this man has fled the
battle.
And Abram is now the hero of the
inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah because he has
delivered them.
He is their deliverer now.
And the devil had to be enraged because
the king of Sodom knew that he had
just visited this holy priest and king of
Melchizedek.
And his mind must have thought, I know
what's happening now.
They're going to convert the whole bunch.
They're going to convert my whole nation.
They're going to convert them.
And the devil was enraged.
And so the king of Sodom comes to
Abram and he says, look, you can have
all the spoils.
Give me the people.
Give me back the persons.
You can have all that we possess.
Now, folks, we're not talking about a couple
of wagon loads of groceries.
We're talking about the spoils of armies and
nations.
There had to be donkeys.
There had to be a line.
There had to be thousands of sheep and
donkeys and camels.
And, you know, a camel today is like
a Cadillac in those days or a Mercedes
Benz.
We're talking about wealth beyond imagination.
And he says to Abram, look, you can
have it all.
I want my people back.
That's the devil speaking.
You can have everything you have, but don't
take their souls.
I want their bodies.
They belong to me.
Abram didn't even blink.
He said, I made a covenant with God.
I swore that I would not take a
shoelace from you.
There is nothing that you have that I
want.
I won't touch anything you have.
He said, you can have the people.
You can have the spoils.
I'm keeping Lot.
Of course, Lot, by his own decision, went
back to Sodom.
But I want to show you something here.
Where did Abram get this tremendous authority?
Where did he get this power over temptation?
This was no mere temptation.
This is a temptation as strong as anything
we've ever met in the spiritual realm.
Where did this man get this spirit of
independence from materialism, the things of this world?
He was already a wealthy man, the Bible
says, but he was detached from it all.
But now it's placed before him the greatest
temptation he's ever had in the physical realm.
And immediately, he doesn't even have to think
twice.
Where did he get that power?
He got it from his visit with Melchizedek.
Because Melchizedek had given him a discovery of
who God was, a new discovery.
Now, he knew him.
In one way, he knew him.
But he did not know him in this
way.
There was a new discovery that was going
to give him power and faith to face
the temptation.
I want you to follow me very closely
now.
He said, I have sworn to the Lord,
I will not take from you a thread
or shoelace.
I will not take anything of yours unless
you boast you made me rich.
The Bible says when he met with the
king of Salem, he met with Melchizedek, the
Bible said Melchizedek blessed him and said, Blessed
be Abram of the Most High.
Blessed be Abram of the Most High God,
possessor of heaven and earth.
He introduced a new name of God.
And that name was El Elyon, God Most
High, creator, possessor of heaven and earth.
Now, this man is about to face the
king of Sodom.
He's about to face a great temptation to
take on fame, to take on materialism, to
take on riches, and take on, he could
have been, he could have cast aside the
king of Sodom, he could have been master
of it all.
Where did he get this mighty authority that
could cause him to turn away from everything
in this world?
He said, I want nothing of it, because
he's just had a revelation from Melchizedek, a
wonderful revelation, a new name of God.
Now, see, those societies, especially the Hebrews, named
their children with magnificent names, and they actually
believed that naming their child with a glorious
name gave them power to become what they
were named.
They really believed that it endued them with
power to become what they had named their
children.
And there's a new name of God just
now introduced.
He lays his hands, no doubt, on Abram.
Abram is paid in tithes, and he says,
Abram, child of the Most High God, child
of El Elyon.
New name, a new revelation, a new discovery
of who God is, possessor of heaven and
earth, who owns everything, the cattle on a
thousand hills, everything belongs to him.
No wonder he could look at the king
of Sodom and all of his stuff and
say, that's trivia.
My father owns the cattle on a thousand
hills, why would I let you enrich me
when my God owns it all anyhow?
He had a revelation.
Glory be to God.
Possessor of all things.
Abram leaves Melchizedek convinced and persuaded, God has
everything under control.
If God is possessor of heaven and earth,
possess me.
Abram became God-possessed.
His faith had been wavering up to that
time, but now he begins, his faith starts
rising.
His faith becomes increased in the Lord.
Hallelujah.
Have you discovered El Elyon in your life
yet, that God has everything under control?
Abram could laugh now.
The devil, you offer me trinkets.
When I know in my heart that I
have a revelation now that the God that
I serve, he owns the universe.
He's the creator.
It means the creator, the possessor of all
things.
Everything was created by him and for him.
Speaking of Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Jehovah,
God, everything is in his hands.
Everything he possesses, he owns it all.
All we talk about the great armies of
the United States, the greatest power on the
earth.
All folks, that is nothing.
God just has to blow and it's all
over.
He just has to hop or pop and
it's all gone.
He's the possessor.
He's the owner of it all.
El Elyon, are you able to face your
storms in life and your problems in your
crisis, knowing that God owns it all, that
God is possessor of it all?
Do you understand that what El Elyon really
means is God is boss?
In actual, plain American language, God is boss.
There are no accidents in my life.
There's no such thing as fate.
There's no such thing as luck, good or
bad.
All you people that are still playing the
numbers, you think your pastor doesn't know?
Well, I may not know it all, but
I know my heavenly father does.
And every time you do that, you think
that you're going to have a streak of
luck.
There's no such thing as a streak of
luck with God's people.
There are no accidents.
God is boss.
He is in control.
God has everything under control.
El Elyon.
God, or Abram, uses this new revelation to
challenge God now.
He said, I believe you possess, you create
all things.
You're the creator.
You created us all.
Where's my son?
Where's my promised child?
You're the creator.
I believe that.
But father, where is my son that you
promised?
You said to be the father of many
nations.
I am childless.
And Abram said, behold, to me, thou has
given me no seed.
And no one born in my house is
my heir.
See, once again, Abram's faith is wavering.
A crisis strikes down and he begins to
take matters in his own hands.
And you know the whole story.
He goes into his wife's concubine or made
pager by name and has what I would
say is illegitimate child, because it's illegitimate that
it does not serve God's fulfilled promise.
And the Lord said to Abram, one shall
come out of your own bowels and he
shall be thine heir.
And so God, to strengthen his faith, goes
into covenant with Abram.
This is when the covenant, the Abrahamic covenant
was made with Abram.
But for the next 13 years, even though
he has the covenant promise, nothing happens.
And Abram's faith begins to waver once again.
So God decides to give him another fresh
revelation of himself.
And it came at the age of 99.
Now, folks, the purpose of my message this
morning is to show you the whole point
of what I'm trying to get to now
is that God uses crises.
He uses the most difficult times in our
lives to give us fresh revelations of who
he is, of his power, of his might
and how he delivers.
He uses crises.
He's in another crisis now.
He's taking matters in his own hands.
He really doesn't believe that he's going to
get this child.
So he does it himself and he produces
an Ishmael.
Now, 13 years go by, Ishmael is 13
years old, he's 99 years old, and he's
totally lost confidence and faith in this promise.
And when Abram was 99 years old, the
scripture says the Lord appeared to him and
said, And here's another revelation of who God
is.
These are like new sparks, new beans coming
out of a diamond and looking at it
from different ways.
And God is showing his nature, who he
is, so that he can have confidence that
his faith would be encouraged and put upon
a firm foundation, that he'd be fully persuaded
of God's faithfulness.
The only reason God is speaking this word
to you and I this morning is to
encourage our faith, to put a rock-solid
foundation under your confidence in him, that you'll
be fully persuaded that God is everything he
says he is and will do everything he's
promised to do.
And when Abram was 99 years old, the
Lord appeared to him and said, I am
the almighty God.
Walk before me.
Walk before me and be thou perfect.
Here's the revelation.
I am the almighty God.
The true, I mean, the actual pronunciation in
Hebrew is El Shaddai.
In our modern language, it's El Shaddai.
But the proper pronunciation is El Shaddai.
And God was speaking personally now.
This was God's own voice.
God's speaking mouth to mouth, face to face
with Abram.
And he's saying, Abram, I'm going to tell
you something else about my nature.
I've told you that I'm in control of
all things, that there are no accidents in
your life, no fate, no luck.
I am head, I'm chief, I'm boss of
all things.
My word is eternal.
Now I'm going to tell you something else
about me, about my nature, that you have
to understand if you're going to continue in
faith, because everything depended on faith.
All of the plan of God was dependent
on faith.
Without faith, it's impossible to please him.
They that come, they must believe that he
is the rewarder of those who diligently seek
him.
And he says now, I want you to
know, Abram, I am your El Shaddai.
Now keep this in mind, Abram, I am
the God who removes all obstacles.
I'm not just boss of all creation, I'm
not just the creator.
I'm the one who removes every obstacle in
the way.
I am not bound by nature, I'm not
fettered by man or beast, I'm not fettered
by anybody.
I can do anything at any time.
Nothing binds me.
I can't be saying none can compare.
Who can compare?
I am your El Shaddai, God all-sufficient.
I am the God who keeps his word
and no obstacle can stop it.
There are no mountains too high, no valleys
too low, no waters, no oceans, no rivers,
nothing.
No floods can hinder it.
When I say it, it's going to be
done.
Nothing can stop my promise.
All-powerful, all-sufficient.
And it also means keeper of my word.
I am the keeper, I guarantee my word.
You see, God saw Abram wavering in his
faith.
And Abram now is looking at all the
impossibilities.
I'm 99, I'm a dry tree, my wife's
womb is dead.
My time is up.
And now, there's no hope, he's losing hope.
But you see, God uses every crisis.
You understand what I'm saying?
He uses every crisis that we go through
as believers to build our faith and to
hold us, to face the ever-increasing intensity
of our crises and troubles in life because
we're going through a wilderness.
And this is the very hour, the moment
this revelation comes, that's when the Scripture said
he waxed strong through faith, giving glory to
God and being fully persuaded that what he
had promised he was able to do, he
was able to form.
That came at this moment, this revelation of
God all-sufficient.
This was a revelation of God's name and
he knew that God cannot lie.
God had sworn to him, this is who
I am.
If you get your eyes off of your
impossibilities, get your eyes off of those things
on your job, get your eyes off your
family problems, get your eyes off of everything,
I'm your El Shaddai.
I made you a promise.
I'm sufficient.
Glory to his name.
Now, he'd say, he's made me a father
of nations.
What he said he's going to do, he's
going to do it.
This newfound faith that he has now, this
all-sufficiency of Almighty God enabled him also
to get his new name.
He is now called, after this revelation, he's
called Abraham.
God added his name to Abram's name and
now they're united in a special realm of
faith.
I want us, this morning, God help us
to understand the secret of walking uprightly before
God because this is when he truly began
to walk uprightly before God because he had
this revelation and he absorbed it in his
being.
There is no doubt, folks, this is how
you walk uprightly before God.
He sends the revelation of who he is,
of his keeping power.
You don't walk uprightly because you've got willpower.
You don't walk uprightly because you have got
it all figured out.
You don't have the strength, the power to
walk uprightly before God.
That's what the new covenant is all about,
how God sends the Holy Ghost and empowers
you.
He empowers you to live every promise that
God's demanded of you.
And the secret of living an overcoming life
is to have a full revelation, be fully
persuaded that the promises that God has made
to his church, he will keep.
It is not my promise to him, I
promise to do it no more, Lord, I
promise I'll never do it again.
You've made a thousand of them broken, every
one of them.
Your word is no good to anybody.
Your word's not even good to me, my
word's not good to you.
Without the Holy Ghost, without him, there is
no good word.
My handshake, my promise to you is going
to be broken somehow.
I would not intend it to be that
way, but flesh will always be flesh.
God doesn't accept it.
It has to be crucified and put aside.
This El Shaddai, you see, it's not enough
to just have a covenant promise.
You have to be fully persuaded that your
El Shaddai will keep the promise.
There has to be a full persuasion.
I know a lot of people say, I
have the promise.
Yeah, but do you really?
Are you fully persuaded that God's going to
do what he said he would do?
Is that going to be at rest?
The evidence of faith is rest.
If you're not at rest, you're not in
faith.
If you really have faith in who he
says he is and what he's promised to
do, you don't have a worry in the
world this morning.
Because all things work together for good to
love God, they're called according to his purpose.
You're at rest this morning because you're trusting
in him, because he said he'll not let
the devil have you, he'll not let anything
happen to you that's such as common to
all men, and even in your temptation he'll
make a way of escape that you may
be able to bear it.
Hallelujah.
You see, God had made a promise to
Abraham, I will be your shield and your
exceeding great reward.
Those were covenant promises.
We call it the Abrahamic covenant.
What he's saying, no enemy's going to hurt
you.
I'm going to deliver you.
I'll be your reward.
I'm going to maintain you, is what it
means.
I'm going to maintain you.
Folks, a lot of you believe God saved
you soundly, but you really don't believe he's
going to maintain you properly.
I believe God saved me to maintain me.
Oh, come on, say amen about that.
You see, Abraham lived in a very wicked
society.
All those in the lower Jordan vicinity where
he had finally settled and had a season
of rest, very wicked and wild generation.
In fact, the Lord himself said their cup
of iniquity was being filled and they were
going to come under judgment.
But still, Abraham was enabled to live a
holy life.
In the midst of abounding iniquities on every
side, he lived a holy life.
Why?
How can we live a holy, godly life
as this nation spins out of control and
this world becomes increasingly wicked and vile, contemptuous
against God?
How can his church grow in holiness and
righteousness and walk uprightly before the Lord?
It has to do with this revelation that's
about to come now, the greatest revelation of
all to this wonderful man of God, Abraham,
the father of all nations.
In the 22nd chapter of Genesis, if you'll
turn there, please, Genesis 22, we come to
Abraham's supreme test.
Genesis, the 22nd chapter.
Sorry to read verse one.
And it came to pass after these things
that God did tempt Abraham and said unto
him, Abraham, he said, behold, here I am.
He said, take now thy son, thy only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee
into the mountain Moriah and offer him there
for burnt offering upon one of the mountains,
which I shall tell you of.
Abraham rose up early in the morning and
saddled his ass and took two of his
young men with him and Isaac, his son,
and claimed the wood for the burnt offering
and rose up and went unto the place
which God had told him.
The third day Abraham lifted up his eyes
and saw the place far off.
Abraham said unto his young man, abide ye
here with the ass and I and the
lad will go yonder and worship and come
again to you.
Now stop right there and look this way,
if you will, please.
We're coming now to the greatest revelation and
also the greatest test that Abraham ever had.
Now, folks, I want to tell you something.
This story, this whole episode that I've been
reading to you and talking about with Abraham,
has no meaning to me other than a
wonderful story of God's provision in the Old
Testament.
But that's all it means unless it has
some application for me today.
My problems, my life, my struggle.
If it's just a Bible story, it's just
another Bible story.
But that's not what it is.
My Bible tells me, and you know it
well, that all these things are written for
our sakes upon whom the ends of the
world have come and are given to us
as our examples, the Bible says.
And here is where we learn the truth
about our God whom we serve today.
In this great crisis, now get this in
mind, Abraham is 125 to 130 years old
now.
Isaac is at least 30 years of age.
All these pictures of the little boy, forget
it.
He's a young man.
He's at least 30 years of age.
The Lord comes to him and says, Abraham,
I want you to take your son, your
only son.
It means your only begotten son.
And I want you to take that boy
to Moriah, and I'm going to show you
a mountain.
And I want you to go to that
mountain.
I want you to sacrifice your only son,
your loved son.
I want you to lay him on the
altar, and I want you to sacrifice him.
So without question, the next morning, you have
to take your own fire, because how do
you build a fire out there?
In those days, they carried censers and carried
the fire wherever they went.
Two young lads go along with the donkey,
and they have their censer.
They have split the wood and piled it
on the donkey's back.
And with these two young men and Isaac,
they had a three-day trip.
Can you understand that on that three-day
trip, it had to be the most trying
time of Abraham's life?
In fact, in his mind, Isaac was dead.
Isaac, because the Scripture says in Hebrews that
he received him in form as from the
dead.
He was a dead man.
He had given up everything, even though he
knew that this was the promised seed, that
nations were supposed to come out of this
land, that the Messiah...
In fact, the Bible says Abraham, speaking of
Jesus, Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and
rejoiced in it.
He knew the coming Messiah would come through
this seed.
Can you imagine what it took?
Can you imagine the faith this man had?
Where did he get it?
He was a human man, like passers, like
you and me.
He was not a super saint.
This man made compromises I'd never think.
I'd never think of trading my wife off
and putting her in a harem.
She'd kill me first.
I'd be a dead man.
This man's a man of like passions.
This man had faith.
Where did he get it?
In a heathen land, surrounded by heathen.
Where did he get it?
From the revelation of the name of God.
The names of God.
He has a revelation.
He told me that he's the creator.
If he's the creator and I kill him,
God's going to raise him up.
I believe in a resurrection is what he's
saying.
So, to get to this Mount Moriah, which
is later...
We know Mount Moriah is where Jerusalem is.
And most scholars believe that where the sacrifice
is made is the exact spot where Jesus
was crucified.
And you remember, Jesus carried some wood up
the hill also.
Abraham piles the wood on his son and
his son carried...
They're up on the way up Mount Moriah.
And Isaac looks at the wood in his
hand and he sees the big knife strapped
around his father's waist.
And he sees him carrying a censer and
he says, Father, here's the wood.
There's the knife.
Where's the sacrifice?
They get on top of that.
I want to tell you something.
He said, God will provide a sacrifice.
Now, this all prefigures Jesus Christ.
There's no question about it.
I could stop and talk to you right
now how that prefigures Christ himself.
Remember the three-day trip where really he's
dead in his mind.
Remember, Hebrews says he's received as from the
dead back to his father.
It's all prefigures Christ.
I could stop and I could talk about
that.
I could talk to you about human sacrifice,
how God hated human sacrifice.
I could tell you about how the Bible
says obedience is better than sacrifice.
I could tell you how that that was
a heathen custom.
And yet God was building a church of
faith.
He was going to be the father of
the church of faith.
Those were saved by faith.
And God was telling every forthcoming generation that
one day there has to be more than
an animal sacrifice.
There has to be one pure.
There has to be one holy that comes
and lays down his life.
He was prefiguring the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
for the sins of the world.
It was all there.
But that's not where I want to abide.
I want I want to go in a
different direction.
I want us to focus on this new
discovery of the name of God that was
given to Abraham because it has everything to
do with our living and overcoming life.
Listen to me closely.
If you've been having a struggle, you've been
living in guilt and shame and fear because
you say, I can't overcome my besetting sin.
I want you to listen close now because
there is a freedom for you this morning.
You can walk out of this church shouting
the praises of God, even though yet you
don't have the victory if you lay hold
of this revelation that God gave to Abraham,
this revelation not only to him but to
the church of Jesus Christ.
He'll deliver you and set you free.
Now, I know Isaac willingly laid on the
altar because his dad, his father is 130
years old and he's 30.
What kind of a contest would that be?
130-year-old man trying to wrestle his
son, big muscle guy, muscle him onto the
altar.
No, no, no, no, no.
He willingly, Isaac had faith.
He had been taught the covenant.
He had heard the revelation his father had
given to him of the names of God.
He too was also, he believed in the
all-sufficient God.
He too knew that if he died, he
could be raised again.
But if not, he would lay it down.
This also prefigures Christ willingly offering himself as
a lamb, as a sacrifice for mankind.
Abraham lifts the knife.
He's about to thrust it through the heart
of his beloved son.
And the angel of the Lord called unto
him out of heaven and said, Abraham, lay
not thine hand upon this lad, neither do
thou anything unto him.
For now I know that thou fearest God,
and hast not withheld thy son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked.
And behold, a ram caught in the thicket
of his horns.
And Abraham went and took the ram and
offered him as a burnt offering in the
stead of his son.
I want you to listen.
You talk about God being a provider.
He provides long before you were born.
He was setting up circumstances in your life.
Get this, please.
Here comes Abraham up one side of the
mountain.
A lamb is coming up the other side.
A ram.
Can you imagine?
A ram's coming up here and the Holy
Ghost is just leading him.
And just as soon as the knife is
about to come, God suddenly puts an appetite
in that ram to get something under that
bush.
And he gets in there and gets his
ram, his horn stuck.
Who stuck him there?
Do you remember when Moses, they come to
the waters of Mar and it's bitter?
And God shows him a tree?
They tell me in that section it took
thirty to fifty years to grow those kind
of tree, any kind of tree in that
area because the other side of the Red
Sea and the Nile.
Do you understand this?
Moses is still out in the wilderness.
This beginning is up there for forty years
alone with God.
God was planting the tree.
And he says, little tree, one of these
days, forty years from now, I've got a
man going to come by here and I've
got an army of my people coming by
here and I'm going to need you.
No storm can touch it.
No worm can eat it.
God said, I'm going to need you.
Forty years from now, I'll tell you before
I was born, God picked me a wife
before she was born.
If you don't believe that in 22nd chapter,
chapter 22, at the very time that he's
sacrificing here, the scripture says that his brother,
that you will beget Rebecca.
The moment he's lifting his knife, his brother
bears Isaac's wife.
What a God we serve.
After the sacrifice, after this is all over,
he said, oh, by the way, your brother's
just had some children.
And one of them is named Rebecca.
And it's going to be years down the
line before they meet.
What a God.
Before we call, he answers.
So now let's go back to the sacrifice.
He sacrificed his lamb, this ram.
Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah
-Jireh.
Jehovah-Jireh.
Now, here's a new discovery.
The greatest discovery God ever gave to this
man of humankind.
It means the Lord who sees.
In our language, it means God will see
to it.
It also includes provision.
Now, folks, we have so misinterpreted this scripture.
And if you think all it is, is
God giving you houses and land.
I heard a preacher, once he pointed to
a beautiful new card, said, look, Jehovah-Jireh.
Look what God provided me.
Folks, we don't...
The scripture says God's promised to supply all
our needs.
All our needs to be supplied in Christ
Jesus, the Bible says.
This is a revelation.
You'll miss it if you think Jehovah-Jireh
is just to put food on your table.
He's your father.
He does that out of his fatherhood.
He does that out of his love.
But Jehovah-Jireh here is something else.
God is saying, look down to all these
promises I've made to you, who I am.
And I am all sufficient.
I have given you covenant promises.
I'll never leave you.
I'll never forsake you.
I've given you this promise that I'll send
you the Holy Ghost.
I'll put my fear in your heart.
All the covenant promises.
I'll be a shield to you.
No enemy is overcoming you.
He's talking about spiritual enemies.
He's talking about demons and devils and temptation.
He said, I'm going to fill you with
the Holy Ghost, and I'm going to cause
you to walk in my ways.
God has given us all these promises.
He says, now, I have them.
I've given them to you.
I've revealed them to you.
Now I'm going to reveal myself to you
as Jehovah-Jireh.
I'm going to see to it.
I'm going to see to it that you
have all the power you need in the
moment of temptation.
I'm going to see to it that you
have everything you need, all the provisions to
keep my word.
And, folks, I want you to know something.
Over every commandment, every demand that God makes
of us regarding holiness, righteousness, and walking uprightly
over above every demand, he has written Jehovah
-Jireh.
I will see to it.
Glory to God in the highest.
What if Abraham had doubted?
What if he'd say, well, God, this is
too much.
I can't handle it.
You mean all you want of me is
my faith, my confidence?
I don't have to make you a bunch
of promises.
When he said to Abraham, I want you
to walk perfectly, means uprightly before me.
I want you to walk uprightly before me.
I want to tell you something.
God has no plan B.
There was no chance of failure.
None.
I was praying over this.
I said, Lord, if it all depended on
faith, what if he'd failed?
What would your plan?
Messiah would come from this.
What if he failed?
Would Isaac have died and that's it?
He would have gone out into the wilderness
and just died in bitterness and confusion.
Lord made it clear.
Holy Ghost made it clear.
Well, there's no plan B.
There was no possibility of failure because the
faith he needed, I was going to supply
him.
I said, I'd see to it.
That's who I am.
I'm Jehovah-Jireh.
Everything I demanded of him, I'm giving all
the resources.
There were no chance of failure.
It was a test.
That's all.
They that know thy name will put their
trust in thee.
The name of Jehovah is a strong power.
The righteous run into that name and is
set on high.
You run into the name.
You run into the security of the name
of God, the names of God.
You run into the security.
Now, in close, let me tell you how
strongly it is.
In the Hebrew, it all infers this very
strongly.
Listen closely, please.
When God has revealed his names to us,
we're to run into the security of those
names.
Be fully persuaded of them and risk our
very life at it.
And the Bible said he pledges his very
existence on fulfilling these promises.
He said, I'm Jehovah-Jireh, and the word
really is all hidden here, but it totally
infers in all of these covenant promises and
in the new covenant itself.
If I don't keep my word, if I
don't seek to it, then my throne collapses.
The universe dissolves and everything is ended.
It's all over.
He risks his throne.
He risks everything.
He chains himself, literally chains himself, saying there
will be no more existence of God.
God could no longer exist.
There would be no throne.
There would be no universe, no cosmos, no
heaven, no earth, no hell.
It's all over.
That's how strong it is.
God says, I have committed all that I
am, all that I have to keep you
by my grace.
And when I'm finished with all, we go
through all these names in the weeks ahead.
Next Sunday, we go to Lord willing, Jehovah
-Rapha, God that healeth thee.
But as we go through these, God says,
I want you to lay hold of this
so that you don't have to walk with
guilt.
Stand with me for just a moment.
If you tell me this morning that you're
truly a believer, you love Jesus, and you've
asked God to put a hatred for sin
in your heart, you may not yet have
the victory.
But I tell you now, this is God's
living word.
You lay hold of it.
If you can't figure, if you can't remember
all of these Hebrew names, Elion, just say
he's the boss.
Number one, right?
El Shaddai, no matter how you pronounce it.
Maybe you have a hard time with remembering
El Shaddai.
He's promised to be all sufficient.
Just say, he's everything I need.
He's everything I need.
He's every provision I'll ever need.
And number three, Jehovah-Jireh, God said he'd
see to it.
My wife tells me to do so.
I say, well, I'll see to it.
Sometimes I put it off.
I don't see to it.
But when God says, I told you I'll
see to it, he's going to do it
right in his time.
In Holy Ghost time, he's going to see
to it.
He made a promise to keep you from
falling.
He's made you a promise that the devil
can't have you.
He's going to see to it.
I don't live with guilt.
I don't live with fear.
I live at rest.
I'm not perfect.
I've got a long way to go.
Just ask my wife.
I've got a long, long way to go.
Man, I still get provoked.
I do stupid, dumb things.
But I go back to the covenant names
of God.
Lord, I'm not there yet, but you promise
you're going to get me there.
You're going to get me there.
Hallelujah.
Glory to God.
I'm going to open these altars.
In the annex, you feel the Holy Spirit
moving in your heart?
I want you to just move forward between
the screens.
And Pastor Rhodes will be there.
And he'll take you into another room.
I want to pray for you first and
with you.
And then you'll go into one of the
prayer rooms.
And we have some wonderful saints of God
there to minister to you and pray with
you.
And here in the main auditorium, the balcony,
here in the main floor.
And open this altar.
I'm going to pray and ask the Holy
Spirit to make this word alive to you.
Truly alive to you.
You came in here this morning carrying some
kind of a burden.
God says, I want you to come now.
Lay that down.
And I want you to trust in who
I am, who I said I am.
I want to be everything that I've said
I am.
I want to be to you.
Folks, I believe what I preached this morning.
I've risked my life on it.
And it's by peace and rest to my
soul like I've never known in all my
ministry.
And he wants to bring the whole church.
There should be no guilt in this place.
If you're willing to say, Lord, here's my
sin.
Here's my lust.
Here's my problem.
Here's my bitterness.
I want to tell you something.
If you're here this morning, you've got bitterness
in your heart at this Christmas season.
If you have any bitterness toward anybody.
In fact, that's the title of my message
next week.
The world's deadliest sin.
Not a disease, rather.
The world's deadliest disease is unbelief.
I've got a lot of bitterness.
It's bitterness.
If you've got any bitterness in your heart
toward anybody.
Don't you dare walk out of this church.
That'll send you to hell quicker than anything.
But God says, if you've got bitterness in
your heart.
What happened?
The bitter waters of Mara.
The tree.
You come to the cross.
You come to the cross of Jesus and
say, Lord, I laid this down.
Pluck it out of my heart.
Sweeten the bitterness.
Sweeten my heart.
Some of you need to be sweetened up
this morning.
I mean it.
I mean, you need to be sweetened up.
Some of you wives are saying amen.
Well, same to some of you husbands.
Christmas wasn't as smooth as it should be
for some of you.
It wasn't as loving as it should have
been.
Some of the words that have been said
and spoken.
Because of all the hurts of the past.
Let's deal with it this morning.
If you're not right with God.
If you don't know Jesus.
If you've been running from him.
And there's been fear in your heart.
Because there's been trouble in your family.
Bring it to Jesus this morning.
And come to Jehovah Jireh.
And let him bring his word into your
heart and heal you this morning.
Father, in Jesus' name, find every hungry heart
in this place.
Those in the balcony and here on the
main floor.
And those in the annexes and the overflow
rooms.
Lord Jesus, change our hearts this morning.
Let us rise in faith and hope on
the covenant names of our Jehovah God.
Yahweh.
Yahweh, we thank you.
We thank you for the revelation of who
you are.
And we rest.
We rest in that.
Lord, heal every hurting heart in this place
this morning.
Heal every hurting heart.
Up in the balcony, just go to the
stairs on the other side and come down
any aisle.
That's it.
In the annex, just move forward.
Now, just step forward right in between the
screens.
And you'll be given directions.
But I want to pray for you first,
along with those that are here in this
auditorium.
I'm going to have our choir ministry one
song as we wait for those that are
coming.
I see people coming from all the aisles.
Please move close to make room for those
that are coming, if you will, please.
Father, I pray for a miracle this morning
of grace, comfort, revelation.
That everyone who's responded will have a touch
from heaven.
Oh, God, ignite our faith.
Put fire under our faith.
Lord, for those that are wavering in their
faith and some who feel that God has
forgotten them or God has not been acting
as swiftly as they think he should.
Oh, Holy Spirit, help us to rest in
who you are.
Our great Jehovah Jireh.
Our El Shaddai.
Our El Ayaan.
We thank you for the revelation of who
you are.
You're going to keep us from falling.
You're not going to let the enemy take
advantage of us.
Oh, God, you're going to come just in
time.
Just in time and see to it that
we not only are maintained, but we're maintained
in great grace.
Exceeding great promises of God.
Hallelujah.
Not just conquerors, but more than conquerors.
I know that you that came forward are
kind, with a sincere heart.
I want you to pray this prayer with
me right now.
Wherever you're at in the annex in here,
the main floor.
And some of you that didn't come forward,
you pray this right in your seat where
you're standing.
Pray this prayer with me right from your
heart.
Dear Jesus, I thank you that you're beginning
to reveal yourself to me.
And I'm seeing something.
I'm seeing that you're not mad at me.
That you're not trying to get to me
with wrath and judgment.
You're showing me mercy and great love, compassion
and patience and mercy.
Oh, God, I thank you for all of
these promises and help me to believe now.
Give me faith to trust that you're going
to supply all I need to resist all
the temptations.
Everything the devil throws at me, by your
spirit, you'll give me power.
And I will stand and not fall.
Cleanse me, Jesus.
Forgive me, Jesus, for my unbelief.
My sins are settled and they're gone at
the cross of Jesus.
Thank you.
Just lift up your hands and thank you.
In your own words, just thank you.
I give you thanks, Lord.
I give you my thanks.
Thank you, Jesus.
Those in the annex, you follow Pastor Rhodes.
And here in the main auditorium, where do
we go?
Room 204, is it?
206.
Now, if you would like to have prayer,
listen close enough.
If you're not really sure, if you say,
I still have doubts and I still have
confusion in my life.
If you're giving your heart to Jesus for
the first time or you come back to
the Lord, I want you to just go
right out the back and there are ushers
there.
They'll show you up into the annex.
You go into room 204.
We have a New Testament.
We have a Gospel of John for you.
We've got somebody, a person who would like
to just pray with you.
That's all.
You can talk to them.
They'll minister to you.
If you'd like to have that, just turn
right now, right to the crowd.
Just walk back into the lobby there and
ask for the ushers.
Just go up the stairs into the annex,
into room 204.
There are plenty of ushers back there to
show you where to go.
Just ask an usher, where's room 204?
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