My name is Seth Bundy. I am the high school pastor here at Burnt Hickory and it is always a privilege and an honor to be able to stand on the stage and bring the word. And it's a special honor this morning because Chip Paul, our student pastor, made sure to point out to me that this is the first Sunday of Shark Week. So if you know why that's a special emphasis for me to be able to be here, to be able to hold that honor for the s - you know, just for the student team as a whole nowadays, I guess, but it is a privilege to be here with you all finishing out this sermon series titled The Verse That Changed My Life. And I just gotta be honest. I mean, I was gonna come out here and I was gonna tell, tell this kinda, this little story about how I, uh, you know what?
I, I saw the parameters, but I just had to go outside of them just a little bit. Like I had to expand the parameters just a little bit, but it was a good thing I was going last because if you're, if you're before someone and you cheat a little bit, then the people behind you might follow you. Uh, but come on, everybody expects that out of the high school pastor. And then last week, our former high school pastor came and cheated on the sermon title. So I am just following in his footsteps and he confirmed my thought about the high school pastor. Everybody just expects it, right? So we are gonna be cheating just a little bit. Just add an S to that verse if you're taking written notes. It is the verses that changed my life. We're gonna be in the back half of Exodus chapter 17 this morning, verses eight through 15.
And this is a passage in scripture that really just rocked me to my core. See, for most of us, I think if we were to pick out a verse that we were to say, "This is the verse that changed my life," most likely it's probably a New Testament verse. Uh, for, for the other three sermons that have been preached on this, they've all been New Testament verses. And, and sure enough, like I've got plenty of New Testament verses that I would say these have impacted my life in amazing ways. But, but at this point in my life, when I was walking through this, I'd already accepted Christ. I'd already had a relationship with the Lord. And so I was trying to read through the Bible. And so the reality is I never really made it to the New Testament. Like I'm the type of person where I gotta like restart, right?
I gotta start from the beginning and go to the end. Like I've been trying to watch all the Marvel movies all the way through and I've seen the first 10 Marvel movies like 14 times, right? And I'll get to one and I'll be like, "I have not watched one in two months." Gotta restart right back to the beginning. And I'll do the same thing. And some of y'all have done this too because you'll read Genesis, you'll read Exodus, you'll get to Leviticus and you're back to Genesis, right? You restart. So we do every January where we start. So that's where I was, right? I had read through Genesis. I was in Exodus chapter 17. And if you know anything about the chapter 17 in Exodus, usually we see this chapter. And the biggest story that usually we pull from this is that God made water come from a rock.
He told Moses to strike the rock with this staff. And it, he did and, and water flowed from the rock. And it's an amazing story. There's a reason that we focus on it, but for, for me, for a long time, what I would do is every time I'd come to this chapter, I would read that story and I'd be in an amazement of what God had done because it's so cool. Like some of these, some of these Old Testament miracles, like we take for granted, like this is so cool. Like water just flew from Iraq. It just came out of it. And I would, I would be in that mindset and then I'd get to verse eight and I'd be like, "Well, this is just like a battle. Like the Israelites are just walking through a physical battle. Like there's not a whole lot for me here.
Yeah, they fought in a war. Like so what?" And so I would, I would read it, but I would kind of just skim through it. I wouldn't really pay attention to the words. But there was one morning that thank the Lord He got a hold of my heart and a hold of my mind in this moment. And instead of just skimming through this back part, I finally paid attention. I finally really read eight through 15, and this is the passage that changed my life. And, and if you're very type A and you're like two weeks in a row where someone didn't choose one verse, I gave it to you. Okay? Exodus chapter 17, verse 15, if I had to boil it down says this. Moses built an altar and called it the Lord is my banner. Now there's no action point from this, right? There's no immediate thing where you see that and you're like, oh, this is how I should live.
This is what I should do. But when we look at this verse and we see it in the context of the rest of this passage and we walk through it all, man, there is so much to this. What on the outside I just thought of as another battle in scripture and reality was giving me a battle plan for the biggest struggle in my life. Pride. It was walking through this idea. I mean, that was my struggle of being prideful. And, and it still is at times because that's the funny thing about pride, right? Is you start to think you have it under control and you're like, I'm doing pretty good. And then you're prideful again. Like it just, it's a loop that continues to go on and on. And so you're always keeping it in check. In a large part of my testimony, I would group into this just idea of trying to find my identity, just like many of us.
But instead of, man, I knew who I was in Christ. I knew, I knew who Christ was. I had a relationship with him, but instead of just living that out of trying to figure out who God had really called me to be, instead from the very jump, I just tried to put on this persona that I knew exactly who I was. And I knew how God had created me and I was the best creation that God had ever done. And I, like I, I was making sure everybody knew that. And, and pride takes two parts in lives many times. And so for me, for, for a large part of it, it was, it was a pride that, I mean, I, I though I was the strongest person in the room or the most athletic. I thought I was the smartest person in the room. I thought I was the funniest person in the room.
And I wanted to make sure everybody else knew that because I, I thought it. Like I though it was true and so I wanted to make sure you knew that I though it was true. But the other side of pride that oftentimes we kind of just move past is that the pride can take that side, but it can also take the exact opposite. Where on the inside, man, you know that you're not good enough. You know that you're not strong enough. And you're looking at everybody around you and you're going, "Well, they're smarter than me. So I've got to put on the perception that I'm right there with them." And so that was part of my story too. It was the, it was both sides of it where I was going, "I really do think I am this guy." But the other side of it is, man, I am worthless.
I'm meaningless. I've got nothing to bring to the table and I don't wanna show that as weakness. And so I'm gonna make it look like I've got it all together. Because if people really knew who I was, they wouldn't like me. They wouldn't respect me. They wouldn't listen to anything I've got to say. And so I've got to put on this, just this facade to prove that I was good enough. Man, pride had taken over both sections or, or two different areas of my life. And so that's where I was when I walked through this passage that morning. And was totally rocked by ultimately what's, what's a name of God? The Lord is my banner, Jehovah Nisi. The name of the Lord our God that brings ultimate victory. And so today as we walk through this passage, we're gonna see four main points that we must remember to help destroy not only pride, but sin in general in our lives.
And before some of you go, "Well, I don't really struggle with pride." First off, that's kinda prideful. Second off, pride takes over the small things. And we think of pride as this outward arrogance. But really what pride is, is an inward trust. And what I mean by that is, is pride doesn't always take the, the form of you're going out and you're being overly annoying and confident to the people around you, cocky, right? Sometimes it's just you encounter a task and you go, "I know I've got this. I can do this. Right? I can work through this." That's what pride is. At the, at the basis, that is what pride is, is, is a, is a belief that I can do this on my own. It's trusting in your own power over anything else. And so whether it's in our marriage or in our friendships, at work, whatever it is, when we trust in our own power, that is where pride creeps in.
And so as we see this at the very end, we're gonna see the ultimate reason of why we can completely live under the banner of the Lord, our God. Let's pray this morning. Father, we thank you just to be able to gather here, Lord, and to hear your word. And Father, I pray that is exactly what we hear this morning. God, we hear your voice speaking to us through your word. And Father, I pray that we release boundaries. God, that we, we break down walls. God, that we don't get defensive or objective to what you have to say to us, Father. But that we allow you to work through us and to work in us. And Father, to teach us what you want to teach us. God, we love you. And it's your name we pray. Amen. Exodus chapter 17: eight says this, "The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Refiedom." Now, remember, in the very first part of this chapter, in verses one through seven, we see the Israelites.
In Refiedom, this is where God, Moses strikes the s - the rock with his staff and water comes from the rock. And so God has just shown up in this amazing way. Yet in the very next verse, which many scholars believe is maybe a couple of weeks, but some say it's even just a couple of days to potentially hours, they are now faced with this really rough battle. See, get this. The presence of God does not mean the absence of earthly battles. The presence of God does not mean the absence of earthly battles. And this wasn't any ordinary battle or trial. The Amalakites, first off, were, were, they're from the line of Esau, and they were a refined fighting crew, right? They were nomads in the area, so they moved around all the time. And that's exactly how they fought. They would pop in, they would pop out, they would hop around.
They would be hard to track and they would be hard to fight. But the worst thing about them is that they would always sneak around and attack from behind. They wouldn't fight like how I think and how many of you think of when you think of a battle in this time. They wouldn't stand on top of a hill just waiting to fight the, the, the enemy mano-e-mano. No, they would sneak around to the back and attack from behind. And the problem with that is the people in the back, like some of us are just like, "Well, that's just a good battle strategy." But the people in the back are your women, your children, your elderly, and you're sick. They're not the people that are defending your nation or your civilization. It's taking a cheap shot. You're going around taking a cheap shot at your enemy.
So we've got a ruthless crew of experienced fighters that take cheap shots and take the easy way versus a group of people who are exhausted from running. And this is their very first battle in the wilderness. It's not a fair matchup. I mean, some of us feel exactly like this right now. Where we feel like we're facing a battle and it is not a fair matchup. There is sickness in our family. We've lost a job. We've lost this, that, and the other. And it is not a fair matchup. We feel like we are up to our, our neck and everything just going on around us. And we're at a point, some of us have been at a point, or maybe we're at a point now where we're going, I don't even know if there's any reason for me to try because of everything going on.
Like there's no way. There's no way I can defeat this. There's no way we can get through this. There's no way we can overcome this. And the enemy doesn't fight fair. There are no rules of engagement that the enemy follows when he tries to get us. So sometimes it looks like it takes the vulnerable things from us.
It takes these things. But here's what I love about this reminder. While the presence of God doesn't mean the absence of earthly battles, praise God that the presence of earthly battles doesn't mean the absence of God. And so in those moments where God has allowed us to enter into this battle, man, it is the constant reminder that He is right there with us. Church, don't miss this. Before God ever emphasized to Israel that He was their banner, He allowed them to face a battle where they desperately needed one. Hebrews 13: five says this, "For He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you." Never. In the highest of highs and in the lowest of lows, He will never leave us or forsake us. But, but in these battles, we see this because if we, if we though that, that we could win everything on our own, if we could do it all in our own strength, we would never look to His.
And that's how pride works. True reliance on oneself. If you have all this pride thinking you can do it, if you continue to succeed thing after thing after thing, if your job is secure, your marriage is healthy, the bank account is full, your kids are behaving, it's easy to start to believe, man, I've got this all together. I can do this. I am doing it. And without even realizing, we're taking our eyes off of the power of God and starting to think and truly believe to ourselves, man, I've kind of got a hang of this. I'm pretty good at this thing. We may never say those things out loud. We may never say those words out loud, but our lives surely live it. Everything we do shows that. But then the battle comes. And suddenly the diagnosis doesn't care how confident you are. The family struggles don't care how good you think you are.
The job, getting laid off at your job doesn't care of how good of an employee you think you are.
Man, the battles don't care what you think in those moments. And they expose what we've really been trusting in. And our battles don't create pride. They reveal it. They reveal whether we've been carrying our own banner or whether we've been living under the Lord's. And sometimes God allows us to come to the end of ourselves, not because he's abandoned us, but because he's teaching us to stop carrying our own banner and stand or, or bow under his. So look to him and say, God, I need you. I cannot do this on my own. Man, this is where I was when I read this passage. Man, I tried to fight for so long thinking I could do it by myself, thinking I was smarter than whatever situation came, thinking I was stronger than whatever situation came, thinking I could do it. But the battles came that I, I couldn't beat on my own.
And I was in a moment where I was going, I don't know what to do anymore because I've been fighting under my own strength for so long. And, and so I remember just looking to God and realizing I need you. If I could win every battle in my own strength, I never would come to a point where realizing that I needed God in the first place. But when I come face to face with something that I cannot overcome, I have a choice to make. I can either f - continue to fruitlessly fight knowing I'm not gonna win. Or I can look to the power of the Almighty and go, God, I need you. But sometimes what happens is we continue to fight and it looks like we're winning. And maybe we are winning. But I think one of the biggest distractions from Satan is this. I don't think it's that we continue to fail.
I think sometimes it's that we continue to succeed in things that do not matter. Man, some of us are really good in here at certain things that do not matter in terms of eternity. Some of us are really good at focusing on things that do not matter the moment we leave this earth. But that's what all our focus goes to. Some of us are trying to climb the corporate ladder and we're sacrificing all of these things to try to get there. We're trying to, we're sacrificing family time. We're sacrificing church on Sundays because we're exhausted. But we gotta get there. We gotta make that amount of money. Man, I know in my life, it was sports. Man, some of us parents in this room, I need us to hear this this morning. Some of us are so focused on trying to make our kid the next star athlete that we're missing their foundational framework of their relationship with the Lord.
And we go, we, we make up these excuses in our heads of everybody else is doing it. Every, if, if they wanna be on par with everybody else their age, they've gotta do X, Y, and Z. Guess what? We're not meant to look like the world. We have to sacrifice some things. And can I just say from someone who lived it, you can make up all these things about how, hey, they're still gonna be biblically fed. They're still doing a personal devotion. We do a devotion in the car on the way to church or on the way to the ba - uh, the baseball tournament on Sunday. They're still hearing from the word, but you're missing the, the community. You're missing the community of Christ, the people to hold you accountable when you're living like an idiot. And as a high school boy, you need that.
But some of us are so caught up with making our kids look good that we're missing that. We're so caught up with succeeding in our careers that we're missing that. Man, good things can become a very bad thing if they become our God thing. And I think that is Satan's biggest distraction. It's not, it's not having us fail over and over again, but it's letting us succeed in things that do not matter. Because if you feel good, if you feel like you're winning, you're never gonna have a reason to turn to the Lord. And so for some of us, I think that's where we're at this morning is, is we're not failing, but we're succeeding. But if we were honest, it's in things that do not matter in terms of eternity.
See, the blueprint for earthly battles is right here. Verse eight shows us that they're gonna come, that they're going to be here. But verse nine and 10, turn us right around. And no matter what that battle is, it, it shows us how we fight them. Verses nine and 10 say this. Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out and fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow, I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands." So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and her went to the top of the hill. See earthly battles demand spiritual dependence. Look what Moses does. When the battle comes, Moses isn't getting ready to physically fight, right? He's not grabbing a sword. He's not getting ready to go out and into battle. But Moses, Aaron, and her go up on top of the hill to pray because Moses knew that the victory was not gonna come from how good of an army Israel was.
And praise God because monoemano, army to army, they were gonna get destroyed. But Moses knew that that is not where their power came from. That is not where their victory came from. He knew that ultimately the victory would come from the Lord and only the Lord. Psalm 27 puts it this way. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. For today's time, some trust in their jobs, some trust in their families, some trust in the stock market, some trust in their athletic abilities, their family friends. But we trust in the name of the Lord, our God church, that is where our trust needs to be. All of these things change. All of these things fade away. All of these things pale in comparison to some of the things we might face in our lives except for the Lord our God.
He is the one who is constant. He is the one who remains strong no matter what we are walking through. Look, if I, if I'm Moses, I know I'm going to get, I'm going to get armor in a sword, right? I may know objectively that we're about to lose, but I'm walking into this battle and I'm thinking they've never seen a soldier like me, right? They've never seen someone make a difference like me. I am going to work my tail off and we're gonna make this happen, right? We will win this battle even though the odds are so stacked against us. That's where the pride comes in, right? We think, we think that if we just work hard enough and it seems okay because, because the hard work's not a bad thing, but we think if we, we, if we just try and try and try.
But all we do is try and try and try. We never go to the Lord for our strength. We're working thinking that we're gonna be able to conquer everything we face on our own. If we just work hard enough or work long enough or try a different plan, it'll work out. Imagine if we did this in every other area of our life. Imagine if you're going to like a, a new place you've never been to and you're just like, "I don't need my GPS. I'll make 100 wrong turns and then eventually I'll get there." It doesn't make any sense. Right? For me, this morning, I set, I set three alarms because I was not, like, I wasn't gonna be late. I was gonna, that'd be really bad, right? That would be not good. And so I was like, I'll set three alarms. Imagine last night I'm just going, I'm gonna will myself to wake up in the morning at 6:00.
Like it's not, it wouldn't work. In the small things we trust in other things to help us accomplish. But in the biggest moments of our life, we look away from the power of the Lord, our God, and think I can do this on my own.
That's pride. We trust in the GPS with our destination, but won't trust God with our marriage. We'll trust our recipe with our dinner, but won't trust God with his wisdom for our future. We'll lean on everything except the one who actually has the power to win the battle. And earthly battles require spiritual dependence. They require us to turn to the Lord and seek His power and His power alone, realizing that we are not enough. Man, some of us need to hear this today. Our victory here on Earth will never be because of how strong and mighty we are. And if it is, it is not enough of a victory to matter. Nothing we can accomplish on our own will ever have an eternal impact. Anything with an eternal impact is through the power of the Lord alone. And one of the biggest things I try to get across to some of our students, especially on like a mission trip, right?
Is they'll come out of the room and they'll be like, "Seth, I just saved five people." And I'm like, "First off, that's amazing that five people came to Christ, but let's get this clear. You did not save them. The Holy Spirit saved them. And praise God that he chose to work through you and you chose to say yes and obey, but you didn't do the saving." But there's two sides of that. There is the Holy Spirit power, but there is the obeying and saying, yes, Lord. See, spiritual dependence produces faithful obedience. When we depend on Christ, there is faithful obedience that comes from that. This is what this passage is showing us. It is the working together of the spiritual and of the physical. Now, let me be clear here. If God wanted to just snap the, uh, the Amalekites out of existence, he could have.
He could have just thought and they would have died. But he did what he so often chooses to do today, and that's work through the obedience of his children. And sometimes we get caught in the trap, right? We get caught in the trap on this side of just working, working, working, thinking we can overpower what we're walking through. But on the other side, some of us get caught in this trap of, of thinking, well, if I just pray about it, then I don't have to do anything anymore. I can just take my hands off and I no longer have to do anything. But this isn't what the scripture shows us. See, Moses doesn't look at Joshua and go, Hey, don't worry about going to fight because I'm going to pray. No. He says, Joshua, you get your men and you go fight like you know how to.
And I'm gonna go pray to the power, pray to the one who is going to give us this victory. It's the two sides working together. James 2:17 says, in the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, it is dead. It's not an either/or situation. It's not a one or the other. It's both. It's the power of the Lord in us working through us fully. It is not our power. Let us be very clear about that. But it is us still working here on this earth. And so many of us are struggling with temptation and we pray, God, help me, please, Lord, just help me in this moment. And then we put ourselves back in that situation to be tempted. Some of us are praying for God to heal our marriage, but the thing that we are struggling with, we know we can do something to work on it and we're just not putting in the work to work on it.
We're going, God, why isn't this being healed? And we're not doing anything about it. We're praying. It's, it's the idea that we're praying, Lord, bless his food and the nourishment of my body. And you're opening up six burritos from Taco Bell. Like it doesn't work. It don't make any sense. See, we've got a two, a two-year-old and a nine-month-old. And our two-year-old is in, like, his peak of, like. So we got his toy room, but he is now. It's becoming the toy living room and the toy kitchen and the toy dining room. Like he is on his manifest destiny trying to get toys in every room of the house right now. And y'all better watch out, because if he completes our house, he's coming to y'all's. Like he is, he's expanding. Okay? But every night, we. I mean, we try. My wife and I try to get the house just in some kind of order so that when we wake up in the morning, it's not complete chaos from the very beginning.
And so, like, we'll, we'll go and put the boys to bed. And sometimes it takes a long time. And I just gotta be honest. The last thing I wanna do after taking an hour to put Levi to bed is to then go down and clean up the mess that Levi just made. And so I'll try it. I'll try it. I'll be up in his room and I'll be like, Lord, I've seen Toy Story.
I know what you can do, right? If an animator can do it, God, you can do it. Amen. And so Father, if you could just wake up these toys and they could just get in those bins, that'd really help me out. <laugh> So I'll get done. I'll put, I'll put Levi in his bed and then we'll walk downstairs and all the toys are still there. And I'm like, dang it. You know, like, no. <laugh> And I'm like, God, why, why, whd - why did we do this? You know? And he's like, uh, guess what? I did. I gave you arms and legs, right? You can do it. You can put them back in. Now, praying for a happy heart while I do it, only something he can do. But being able to actually do it, I mean, that's something that I can do. I heard a pastor put it this way one time.
God does what we are incapable of, not just what we refuse to do. Man, when I heard that, that struck me. Let me put it this way. If God answered all of your prayers, what would happen?
If God answered all of your prayers right now, what would happen? Would you get a promotion? Would your kids do better in school? Or would lives be changed? Would the gospel reach new places? Would the gospel reach your friend? Are we praying big prayers? Are we praying for God to do something that we could do and we're just too lazy to do it? What are we praying for? Because we serve a God who answers big prayers. I mean, the Lord does things that are outside our power, above and beyond our natural ability, but not just the sim - not just things, the things we just don't wanna do.
Right? He's not our maid. And I'm praying, God, if you can clean this house, he's just like, "Do it. You do it." But I hope you're seeing the two sides of this coin here. There's the spiritual, and there's the physical. There's the prayer. Yes, God is the only source of our power. He is the only reason we can accomplish any of this. But it takes the effort. It takes the work here on this earth. They go hand in hand. But no matter what moment we're in, whether we're in prayer or whether we're working, we're not meant to do it alone. Check this out. Exodus 17:11 through 12 says this, "As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it.
Aaron and her held his hands up. One on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remain steady till sunset. Get this faithful obedience flourishes in the body of Christ. Man, I, I, I love this picture, right? We're continuing to walk through seeing both sides of the coin, right? Jo - uh, chapter, or verse nine, Joshua takes men with him, right? He doesn't go on his own. But then here, even in prayer, Moses takes men with him. He does not go on his own. And this is such a beautiful picture of the body of Christ. This is a picture of what we should be. God is the sole source of the power and the understanding that none of this is even remotely possible without his power. But on the human side, this is what it looks like when you completely drop your pride.
Joshua doesn't buck Moses and go, "Hey, I need more guys. I need more men to fight this war." Moses doesn't have the pride and go, "Well, I need to be at the front of this battle so that people can see me leading this army and I can get the credit." But Aaron and her, men, they're holding another guy's hands up. Imagine on a Sunday morning, Carrie's guitar strap breaks and they're like, "Hey, we need you to hold his guitar for him while he can play it." Like that is putting you in a humble position. You're holding up something for another man. That's what they're doing here. What a humbling picture this is and what a beautiful picture of the church this is. All pieces coming together to work as one for the body of Christ. We were never meant to fight our battles alone. But so often our pride gets in the way of that.
And early on in Morgan and I's marriage, we, we were at Home Depot. And, and look, I, I just gotta be honest, they put it in the wrong spot, right? I was looking for something. I knew where it should've been. I knew where it was, but I couldn't find it. And, and Morgan, I love her. She looked at me. I was like, "What?" She just goes, "Why don't you just ask for help?" I was like, "What did you just say to me? Like, well, we're at Home Depot. Like, I can't, first off, I know more about this store than most of the employees. Second off, I can't get my man card in. Like, I can't do that. I've got to find this on my own." And so I was like 20 minutes later and she was like, "I'm going to ask for help." And they found it in like 15 seconds.
But how often is that the picture of what we do in our everyday lives? Where we are walking through a battle. We're walking through something. And we are so prideful that we can't just go and ask for help. We don't go and ask someone to pray with us. We don't go and ask someone to walk alongside us in whatever we're walking. That is what we are called to do as the church, to be there for one another. We're not called to fix ourselves up. Sometimes I think we get lost in this idea that, man, I have to clean myself up. Or, or the biggest one I think sometimes is that, man, we think that, hey, I, I put myself in this situation. I got to get myself out of this situation before I can go to somebody else. That is not what scripture tells us.
That's not what the Lord calls us to. He doesn't say, clean yourself up and then come to me. He says, come to me and I'll clean you up. Man, some of us are, are so stuck in our pride. And we don't even realize that it's pride, but we think, man, I just gotta work through this. I gotta get over this myself that we're not able to just look to somebody and go, Can you pray for me? Can you help me in this? That is what we are called to do as the body of Christ. That is the design. Galatians six: two says, carry each other's burdens. And in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ. This is what we've been called to do as the body. Man, some of us need to drop our pride and ask for some help. And some of us need to drop our pride and see how we can help somebody else.
Man, sometimes we get stuck in this trap of like, I've got my own stuff going on that we never allow ourselves to, to walk alongside somebody because we got our own stuff to figure out, so I'm not gonna be there for them. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. And we don't allow ourselves to be a part of the body of Christ. Man, that's the battle plan. It seems simple, but every battle we fight, that's it. We look to God as the source of our power, but we still work here on earth and all that we can do. And we humble ourselves to the point where not only we seek God's power, but we also look to the people around us to come alongside us and support us. Man, everything we've seen answers this one question of how do God's people fight their battles?
But verses 13 through 15 answer an even greater question. Who deserves the credit when we win? When ultimately we're on the other side of this battle, who do I give the credit to? And I say that's an even greater question because so often that's where we get messed up. As we'll get through this battle and we'll be looking to the Lord's power. Maybe I'm just preaching to myself here, but we'll look to the Lord's power and then find, like He'll give us the victory and then we go, "Man, I'm pretty good at this." And we miss out. We forget. We wanna take the, the, the, the focus on ourselves. And we don't ever celebrate the Lord who gave it to us. Exodus 17:13 - 15 says this. So Joshua overcame the Amalachite army with the sword. Then Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it because I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven.
Moses built an altar and called it the Lord is my banner. Man, some of us need to write that on, in all caps in our notes. Some of us need to write that on our bathroom mirrors so the first thing that we see in the morning when we walk in is the Lord is my banner. He is the one who gives me strength. He is the one who deserves the glory and the victory. See, the victory belongs to the Lord, our banner. The victory fully belongs to the Lord. That's where every point leads to. The presence of God doesn't remove the battle. The battle demands spiritual dependence. Spiritual dependence reduces faithful obedience and faithful obedience flourishes in the body of Christ. But through it all, there's only one banner. There's multiple steps, but there's only one banner. It wasn't Joshua is our banner because he's such a good fighter.
It wasn't Moses is our banner because he's such a powerful prayer warrior. No, the Lord is our banner. He is the sole source of our strength. He is the sole source of everything that we do. Jehovah Nesi, the one who fights my battles, this name of God, Jehovahnesi, this is what changed my life. Hearing that the Lord is my banner, it's what helped me realize the pride that I was living in. See, when I think of the Lord as my banner, when I think of this phrase, I think of like sports banners, right? And I think of historic arenas like TD Gardens where the Boston Celtics play, a team that has so many championships. And for each of these championships, they've got a banner hanging from the rafters, right? And for the people that play on the Celtics, every moment you're in that gym, you look up and you see all these banners and it reminds you of two things.
It first reminds you of what came before you. It reminds you of the greatness that there was and man, I better humble you as a player to know how good the people were that came before you. But at the same time, man, those banners push you to be better. They show you the expectation. They show you the power that comes from the jersey that you're about to put on. And so it pushes you to be better. The Lord being our banner takes that idea and takes it 10 steps further. And if we truly understand it, it, it has to crush the pride in our lives because remember, pride can look two ways. It can look a lot of different ways, but two main ways. Uh, the, and the pride that believes that you're better than everybody else and you want them to know it. Get this, the Lord being your banner humbles you because you know that he's greater than you.
And if the Lord is truly your banner, if the Lord is truly where you're looking and you're seeing God in all his glory, seeing all that he's done, you cannot look at him and go, "I'm better than that guy." It humbles you. It brings you to your knees because you see the glory of the Lord. You see how powerful and how mighty he is. And so the Lord being our banner humbles us because we see how much greater he is than us. Uh, but to the pride that's so self-critical and always looking at themselves and putting ourselves down, the Lord being your banner emboldens you because you know he's greater than you. In bold things, it's the same response. It's the same reason. Because knowing the Lord is greater than you. It, it emboldens you when you don't feel strong enough because i- if you're in this room and you have ever been in that moment where you go, "I am not enough for this situation," can I just be honest with you?
You're right. You weren't meant to be. You were not built to walk through this alone. You were not built to be stronger. The Lord was. The Lord is the one who gives his victory. The Lord is the one who overcomes. And so wherever you're at today, when we put the Lord as the banner of our lives, the one where we get all our power, all of the glory comes from him. When we put him in that rightful position as the Lord over our lives, it changes us. It emboldens us. It humbles us. It, it, wherever we're at, we see where the victory comes from. And sometimes the Lord uses our battles to show us that. Where we come to the end of ourselves and we realize, I was not built to do this. I need God. And what I love about this is the verse before we started, Exodus chapter 17: seven.
Check this out. It says, and he called the place Masa and Maribel because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or not? And right before this happened, the Israelites are going, is the Lord among us? Is the Lord with us? And God shows up in an amazing way. Right? He had just made water come from the rock and they're still going, is God with us? But he shows up in this amazing way and carries them to victory through this battle and shows them that he is always there, that he is their banner. And so church, that's the question that we have to wrestle with today is what is our banner? What is the banner that we are living under? Because every single one of us in this room is carrying one banner. You can't carry more. You can't worship two gods.
There is one thing that everything else in your life points to. Is it approval? And I just feel like I need everybody to say how good of a job I'm doing. I never, I need everybody to see it. I need everybody to look to me because I'm the one that's doing this. Is it work? And everything you do, you sacrifice time with family, you sacrifice other things because you have got to be the best at your job. Is it your family? It can be good things. But if your family becomes the God of your life, the reason you do everything, then you're missing it. Is it your kids? And anything that takes the place of God in our lives pales in comparison. The creation was never meant to take the place of the creator. And so for some of us, we need to put God right back on that place that he deserves this morning.
And we need to realize that we have not been living the life that fully glorifies him in all that we do. We've been putting other things ahead of him. And so what is that banner for you this morning that you just need to lay down at his feet? Is it pride? Is it saying I can do this on my own? What is it? What is it that you don't need to walk out of here carrying this morning? And during this next worship song, I'll be over at the next steps banner along with some of our deacons. And if there's something that we can just pray over you, man, please come see us. Or if you're sitting here this morning, you're going, I don't think I've ever truly made God that sole banner of my life. Man, we would love to walk through what a relationship with Christ looks like.
Or you can click the next steps, part in the app. But don't leave here carrying some other banner that you're not meant to carry and that can't fight the battles that we encounter here on this earth.