Anyone, do you ever remember seeing this before?
One person remembers seeing this before.
It's been a while ago, but we had
a request concerning sometimes those vistas that come
to your doors.
They're called Jehovah's Witness.
They make quite a bit.
I have quite a bit to say about
the names of God.
Do you know God's name?
Well, I think we have here a fairly
complete list, according to what is compiled here,
of the names of God as found in
Scripture.
And the beauty of what I'd like to
say tonight is to apply this to the
23rd Psalm, the six verses of the 23rd
Psalm, which we'll be reading, and then we'll
make some comments concerning of God.
So turn to Psalm 23, and since Earl
White is back there at the back, everyone
can hear him real good.
He's going to read the 23rd Psalm for
us.
Earl, if you will, read that for us.
Thank you, Earl.
You have before you on that sheet mention
of the use of these names of Jehovah
in the scriptures.
The first one is found in Genesis 22
and verse 14.
If you're familiar with that, that's the response
of Abraham after he had offered up Isaac,
and he responds with mention of the name
of God as the Great Provider.
So you can readily see the significance of
that name as it applies to the experience
of Abraham.
God is a Great Provider, and it's not
hard to apply that when you think of
the 23rd Psalm, and the Lord is my
shepherd and I shall not want.
It speaks of sufficiency, the sufficiency of our
shepherds to provide our needs.
Someone's well said, when you have the Lord
as your shepherd, I only want what I
need.
Because God is able, if we let him
have control of our lives, he is able
to control even our wants.
I'm thinking of the wonderful provision that is
made by the Lord himself in the course
of his earthly ministry.
What he provided was always enough and more.
When he fed 5,000, you remember that
they gathered up the fragments, 12 baskets full.
His provision is always sufficient, and when you
think of the provision of the Lord, you
are aware that he can provide all your
needs according to his riches in glory in
Christ Jesus.
The sufficiency of our God.
It's wonderful to be able to read the
23rd Psalm and relate to all that perhaps
the psalmist felt in his own heart.
This is a psalm of David, a man
that was experienced in the area of shepherding,
caring for sheep, and he was able to
project himself into that life situation in which
he needed a shepherd.
And he refers to the Lord as my
great provider.
He is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
And you know, the stories that I've read
about shepherds is that they will stop at
nothing to provide what is necessary for the
sheep that they are responsible for.
And it's so easy to understand when you
read in the New Testament concerning the good
shepherd and his care for the sheep, that
our Lord Jesus Christ never stopped short in
providing all that we needed.
And I read the Word of God and
I think about the value of being a
child of God, and I know that God's
grace is sufficient.
And I know there's an abundance of his
mercy and his grace bestowed upon us every
day of our lives.
So we can relate to this wonderful God,
our provider, the one whose sufficiency is always,
is always assured in every circumstance of life.
So there's no problem in relating that first
Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides to the
very first verse of Psalm 23, Jehovah shalom.
And we had one of those representatives from
the work up in Charlotte, the chosen people,
and he greeted us with shalom.
And you know it means peace, peace.
And when you think of the Lord who
gives peace, therefore being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.
The wonderful salvation that we have has provided
us with peace, peace with God.
We've been perfectly reconciled through a reconciling work
that the Lord Jesus Christ has so perfectly
carried out in accomplishing the will of God.
We also read in that fourth chapter of
Philippians where each one of us, if we
are willing to prove that we cast aside
all of our anxiety, we cast ourselves upon
the Lord, we trust him, and we offer
our prayer up to him in every circumstance
of life, we are assured that the peace
of God, which passes all understanding, will fill
your heart and your soul.
Indeed that's a wonderful promise.
Well, he makes me to lie down in
green pastures, and he leads me beside quiet
waters.
Sustenance is something that is recognized when you
look after sheep.
They have many varied needs, and above all
else, they need to be cared for in
a very special way.
They tend to be rather dumb.
I don't think that when you think in
terms of Christians being called sheep, that it's
not necessarily a complimentary title, because sheep are
dumb.
They tend to roam away from the best
place to graze, the place of safety.
They tend to get in trouble.
You have no difficulty as far as the
Christian life is concerned in knowing that sometimes
it's so easy to get off the straight
and narrow.
It's so easy for us to go far
afield, out of the will of God, and
away from where he is able to provide
and sustain and keep us.
That picture of peaceful enjoyment, of all that
the Spirit of God would minister to us
and to our soul's needs, so often we
wander away from that, and we begin to
act as if we're not sure what course
to take.
I would, in my own experience, say this,
open the book, get back to the Word
of God, let the Spirit of God minister
the things of Christ to your own soul,
and therein you soon find that you are
brought to that place of quietness where you
can lie down and be comforted, be sustained,
be provided with everything that you need to
stabilize your life, even sometimes in very hard
circumstances.
The third title, and incidentally each one of
those Old Testament references that are given, Jehovah
Shalom, Judges 6.24, was the experience of
Gideon after he had an encounter with an
angel and provided a meal, and was given
some instructions concerning what he was to do
about those prophets of Baal, and which he
responded and carried out so beautifully, and how
God blessed him.
The Lord who gives peace, I'll tell you
what, he needed to be sure that he
was in the center of God's will, because
he was fixing to undertake something for the
Lord and for the glory of God that
wouldn't be too popular among those Baalites, and
those of even his own household that were
followers of Baal.
In Exodus 15.26, here's a reference, Jehovah
Rathika, and the Lord who heals, and there's
need for healing.
If you make this application to what would
be most apropos to this 23rd Psalm, he
restores my soul.
Well, isn't it amazing how easy it is
for one of God's children to wander away
again and need restoration?
And everyone should be alert and on the
lookout for his fellow believer.
That's what we're encouraged to do, and most
of all to take that person to prayer
and to take them to the Lord.
He restores my soul.
Restoration.
Anytime a sheep got away from what was
the desire of the shepherd, he had to
do something to restore that sheep, whether he
liked it or not.
And so often that happens to us.
Sometimes we have to be drawn back from
certain circumstances in life.
It may even be things that we have
justified in our own eyes as being suitable,
something that Christian liberty would allow in our
lives, and yet we are away from the
Lord, out of the will of God.
We need to be restored.
God will restore us.
God delights in healing any problem that arises
in the life of one of his dear
children.
The shepherd had a good acquaintance with restoration,
knew what it meant to restore a sheep
that perhaps had wandered afield.
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
And here, when you look at this wonderful
thought of the Lord our righteousness, that is
in that fourth title of God, Jehovah Sidcanu.
And you turn to the book of Jeremiah,
and you see that the prophet had a
loving relationship with God that he based always
upon the righteous acts of God.
He never made any charge against God of
acting in an unrighteous manner in dealing with
him or any of his people.
And certainly when we think in terms of
being restored, being guided in the paths of
righteousness, it's to uphold the holiness of God
that puts a demand upon each one of
us.
Remember, we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ, our
Lord.
Remember, we have taken his name.
We are Christians.
And others in this world, when they hear
of our profession of faith in Jesus Christ,
make a judgment concerning that person, that person
that we talk and speak of so highly.
He must be like we are.
His standards, his values, they must be our
standards, our values.
What are they?
Certainly they should always bespeak of that which
is righteous.
It's for his namesake.
Does it mean anything to us to be
sure that we do not besmirch or do
anything that would be a discredit to the
name and the person of our Lord Jesus
Christ?
That's so important, and the psalmist, I believe,
is making this very clear to us even
in his own relationship with the Lord.
After all, there is a beautiful thought that
runs continually through the psalms, and it is
this, that the psalmist continually speaks out his
own experience.
It's not just rhetoric.
He is telling you more than likely something
that he has experienced, an experience in which
he had to draw upon those divine resources
that were available to him.
And he proved his God to be more
than all that he had ever expected in
the way of a resource, a comfort, the
peace.
Anything that relates to this life and the
distress that can touch our lives, the psalmist
is reminding us of these things.
And when you come to that fourth verse,
and how many times we have read this
verse with those that are sometimes having to
walk in that valley of the shadow of
death, it's a view of providing peace even
in the enemy's territory.
Even though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I fear no evil,
for thou art with me.
And that latter part of that statement is
a thing that just sometimes seals us as
far as what we really need in the
time of distress.
The Lord who is there.
Isn't it wonderful to know that the Lord
said, I will never leave you nor forsake
you.
I will never leave you nor forsake you,
regardless of the circumstances, no matter where you
might be, even if you are out of
my will.
Isn't it wonderful to know that God doesn't
stop loving us when we're out of his
will.
When we need restoration, when we're in the
enemy's territory, when we're walking through the valley
of the shadow of death and the distress
that is so great that you can feel
it, you can sense it all around you.
And those words come to us, fear no
evil, don't fear the evil one.
And I'm so thankful we have in the
New Testament words that encourage me.
It says, resist the devil and he will
flee from you.
And how many times in the course of
life Christians have had to claim the wonderful
power of the precious shed blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ to resist the devil.
How many testimonies have we heard in the
course of our lives when Satan sought to
attack and to destroy one of God's dear
blood-bought children, and they claim the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus.
I'm sheltered under the precious blood of Christ
and all of the assaults of the enemy
to discourage and to distress and to destroy.
He was resisted, he had to flee because
one that is mightier than Satan greater is
he.
Remember this, the one that dwells in your
heart, this is the word of God, greater
is he that lives in your heart, greater
is the one that is in you than
the one that is in the world.
So walk through that valley of the shadow
of death.
Doesn't mean that it won't be distressing, doesn't
mean that in the course of life there
won't be tears and sadness and sorrow, but
there's a promise even in the face of
all that this raises for us in the
way of opposition.
Fear not the evil one because I'm with
you and I'll never leave you.
Those are comforting words.
The Lord our banner, Jehovah-nissim.
When you look at that fifth verse, the
preparation of a table before me in the
presence of my enemies, the song of solemn
says his banner over me is love.
And I can't apologize for telling that story
concerning that dear missionary couple that I heard
about, that I read about, in which they
were there, they were in a place that
was so strange to them.
They were surrounded by hostile forces on every
side.
They had not met one person that showed
any interest whatsoever in the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
They were discouraged and one Lord's Day morning
as they gathered simply together with another missionary
couple and they remembered the Lord.
There was such a consciousness of the presence
of Jesus Christ in their midst that this
dear lady said, I look and I beheld
these words, thou prepares the table before me
in the presence of my enemies, thou hast
anointed my head with oil, my cup is
running over.
She said, my cup began to run over.
We need the cup running over experience.
God forbid that we had a cup that
wasn't full and God willing that the cup
would be running over.
You've heard the story of the old fellow
that was asked the question, is your cup
full and running over?
He said, yes and the sauce is running
over as well.
There is that fullness when God provides the
preparation in this life for the things that
become so precious and so dear to a
believer.
And if I can relate this to David
as the shepherd and his own experiences, so
many times the Lord had provided a table.
It was God's provision for him.
He was surrounded by enemies on every side.
There's so much that you read about this
and when you think about it and meditate
upon it, that causes you to be aware
that it's so easy to relate it to
our own experiences.
My cup overflows.
Oh for God's people to have the overflowing
cup.
I believe that's when our lives become a
real blessing to others.
More than enough.
My soul is so full.
Those that love to go out and make
the gospel of Jesus Christ known to others,
I can't hold it within any longer.
I've got to tell someone.
I've got to share it with others.
Our cups, let them be overflowing.
And finally, the Lord who satisfies, sanctifies and
gives to us the assurance that in the
end, regardless of what life may offer and
what it may be like, there's a wonderful
promise.
This promise is one that I think supports
what we believe in the area of the
eternal security of every believer in Jesus Christ.
Surely goodness and loving kindness and mercy will
follow me all the days of my life.
And praise God, I hope it catches up
with you too.
It's not enough just to have it following
you.
Be so conscious of what God is doing
for you that you enjoy it now.
Surely goodness and the loving kindness will follow
me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in the house of
the Lord forever.
The soul of the believer has an eternal
abiding place.
It's in heaven.
It's with Christ.
An eternal abiding place.
My Lord said he was going away to
prepare a place for me.
He said he desired that I might be
with him where he is.
He said he was coming again to receive
us unto himself.
He even tells his heavenly Father, Oh Father,
it's my desire that they be with me
where I am.
John 17.
We do have an abiding place.
It's one that Jesus Christ our Savior and
our Lord has prepared for us.
And believe me, his acceptance at the right
hand of God in that position and place
of authority assures me that when I get
there, when I get there, no one will
question my presence there.
The joy and all that is associated with
security and peace in a person's soul is
found in Christ.
You don't read just the New Testament to
find these wonderful gems of truth.
That sustain and strengthen you as a believer
in Jesus Christ.
They're found over and over again in the
word of God.
All you have to do is look at
God's dealings with his people.
How he sustained them.
How he gave them peace.
How he healed their souls.
How he gave promises of a place, an
abiding place, near to his own heart.
And all because he desired that we be
with him where he is.
Wonder of wonders that God would ever find
so much delight in the likes of us.
But praise God he does.
And the Lord Jesus Christ desires that we
be with him where he is.
There is an eternal abiding place.
For all of those that are safe and
secure in Christ, let us be busily engaged
in telling one and all in this world,
God loves you and Christ died for you.
And the provision that he has made for
your soul is a place of perfect security
and peace.
Well, the next time one of these people
show up at your door, you can keep
this little handout.
And if they want to have you recite
for them the names of God, you pick
it up and you use it.
And while you're using it, you can remind
them of this, that Jesus Christ is God.
And he that has seen the Son has
seen the Father.
Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God.
Even while he was in the flesh here
upon the face of the earth, he never
ceased to be God.
And the JVs are all mixed up in
their theology and in their understanding of who
the person of Jesus Christ really is.
And all they can do is play games
with names.
But believe me, they need to know.
And I would encourage you, if you have
an opportunity and you don't mind a little
bit of confrontation sometimes with someone that's not
on your side, talk to them in love
and seek to win them for our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank thee and
praise thee for thoughts concerning thy loving greatness.
The majesty and the glory of our God
is revealed in the face and in the
person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For David the psalmist, these words that have
been read down through the ages by your
people, these words that have provided comfort and
peace for so many that walked through those
places where there was so much to be
feared.
Even in the enemy's camp, and O our
God, in this world today where we are
just surrounded by so much that's a part
of a world that refuses to accept your
Son.
O our God, comfort us ever with that
assurance that you are with us, and that
we are delivered even out of the hands
of the evil one because of the mighty
sustaining power of the Son of God and
his precious shed blood for the salvation of
our souls.
We thank thee and praise thee for these
moments together tonight.
Bless us and grant we pray thee that
the experience of having our cup run over
and provide blessing for others will be our
experience every day until we see the face
-to-face Lord Jesus.
For we ask this in the precious and
worthy name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus.
Amen.
The service is over.