-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. Hopefully you’re having a great day, a great week, ready to dive into God’s Word and study what thus saith the Word of God. Here today we are looking at God as a strong tower, as a strong tower.
00:54 You know the Bible often refers to God as a high tower, as a strong tower, as a rock. Amen. And yet, where do we go for help in this life? Who do we turn to when times get tough? God wants us to know that He is the strong tower.
01:15 You think about it, if a battle were raging and you knew a safe refuge that you could go to, why wouldn’t you go? I mean, I know that if I was involved in a battle that maybe I didn’t voluntarily sign up for and there was a hot conflict right in front of me, I’d probably just be looking for a safety net, a place to escape to.
01:45 You know, the reason why I make that comparison is because, you know, we’re born into sin. You know, we don’t wake up and say one day that we would like to be a sinner.
01:54 We’re born into it, amen. And so, we are born with a sin nature. We believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
02:01 We are born again, amen. We are bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. We are redeemed, amen.
02:17 We now have peace with God the Father, amen, all through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And when that happens, we are now enlisted in a battle, a spiritual battle that is very treacherous.
02:21 And what God is telling us throughout his word is that he is a strong tower.
02:26 Proverbs 18:10, the name ofthe Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.
02:34 Proverbs 18:10, they could almost preach itself here, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, therighteous runneth into it and is safe. And so, we’re in this battle, we didn’t go and pick this fight, this fight came to us, so to speak.
02:50 And God is saying, I know your condition, I know how vulnerable you are, and I have created a way for you to find strength and safety in me alone.
03:00 You know, God has called a strong tower through the Bible, and if we look at Hebrew names, this is very common. Hebrew names, you know, it could be family related, the son of, the daughter of, so forth.
03:20 The example would be like King David’s son of Jesse, right? That could be a naming convention, if you will, for Hebrew names. Names could be descriptive, like Esau.
03:27 You know, Esau means red, and of course, he had red hair, and he would love the red bean soup, amen. And so red, it could be descriptive.
03:38 But names also can relate to some thing. Esther’s Jewish name, Hadassah, means myrtle. Rebecca’s name means sheep rope.
03:51 And this is a new one that I learned, Luke means luminous, or white, or light. And so names can actually be given and indicate something beyond just the normal everyday. I mean, I think of the names in my house.
04:05 They’re all related, our children are all related somehow to, almost all to family, right? Yeah, Clark Jr., and then his middle name is my wife’s dad’s name, amen. Jenny Rose, who’s named after my grandmother. Kobe, who’s named after my wife’s good friend from high school. And you go on and on.
04:30 And so these names, they’re kind of like family related, or just indicative of something we like, or something that maybe we’re after in the child, you know, naming a child after Grace, or things like that, or even a place that you love.
04:45 You know, you meet a child named New York or something, or after the weather, you know, sunshine, on and on. But here in the Bible, we see oftentimes there’s a huge significance in names.
04:56 And this goes very deep. And I encourage you to look up, you know, history of Hebrew names or information about Hebrew names. It’s a fascinating study, because these names have so much depth.
05:12 And it also relates to the language. And I know that there’s probably a better word for this, the study of the Hebrew language. And that word is probably too big for me to pronounce on air.
05:21 Amen. I’m just a simple preacher. But look, it’s fascinating.
05:25 And the Hebrew alphabet, the letters have words and numbers associated with them and stuff. So you can get really deep with it. But today, we’re just looking at this idea that God has called himself through his word, through the work of the Holy Spirit, a strong tower and a high tower.
05:41 And so today, on this episode, we’re just going to look at what a high tower is in the Bible and who would occupy it. And then in a future episode, we’ll look at some other points here.
05:51 But what is a high tower? Biblically, the idea of a tower comes from protecting an area, right? And it depends on what Bible search tool you use.
06:06 But there’s over 100, I found 111 references to the word tower in the King James Bible. And there’s probably many more than that. But there’s many references to a tower, some of the scriptures that may be familiar mentioning a tower in the Bible.
06:19 2 Samuel 22:3, the God of my rock and him will I trust. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my Savior, thou savest me from violence.
06:35 Psalm 18:2 the Lord is my rock in my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust my buckler and the horn of my salvation and my high tower.
06:45 For that has been ashelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. That’s Psalm 61:3, that was in a shelter for me.
06:53 So we see this idea of a tower. You imagine a time of very different laws. And I’m no historian.
07:03 But back in the old, we call Bible times, amen. There was walled cities, okay? Why is the city got a massive wall around it to protect from invaders?
07:14 We don’t need to put walls around our cities anymore because we are a sovereign nation and we have an Air Force and the Navy and all these things to protect us here in America or in North America, if you will.
07:26 But back then it was kind of like if you could loot the city, you know, if you could, if you had an army strong enough to take it over, then hey, go for it.
07:35 And that’s why you had a lot of conflicts. You had a lot of taking over of cities and God himself called the Israelites out of the wilderness to take over Canaan land and to take over these powers that were in that land.
07:45 And there is even scripture on God knocking the wall over.
07:51 So you have the wall and then within the wall or above the wall, if you want, there is a tower and that tower there is like a watchtower. It’s also a tower for protection. That tower is made out of rock.
08:07 And so there’s so much you can take from this when it comes to the characteristics of God. And I could go on and on about the tower, but just imagine a very large fortified tower that once you are in, no one else can get into.
08:16 And you can certainly have leverage over your enemy and see the enemy coming.
08:23 Okay, salvation. We’re saved by God’s power alone. And what are we saved from? The father of lies and hell itself.
08:32 You know, 2 Samuel 22:3, the latter part of this, my high tower, my refuge, mySavior, thou savest me from violence. Well, who’s the one being violent? Well, that’s the devil. Amen.
08:46 And so when we are saved, we’re saved by God’s power alone. And we, you can look at that as entering that high tower. Amen.
08:54 We enter into relationship with the Lord Almighty. We are saved from this world and from the powers of this world. And we are saved from hell.
08:59 Amen. We are made right with God by the blood of Jesus Christ. So that high tower signifies salvation.
09:05 And that right there is the most important part of the Christian life to believe on the finished work of Jesus Christ, not to believe in your denomination, not to believe in your own works, not to believe in tradition or vain practices of men, but to believe in the risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross at Calvary.
09:26 All we can do, the only thing we can do to please God is have faith. The Bible says it’s impossible to please God without faith.
09:34 Well, what is the opposite of that? That we can please God if we have faith. And faith in what? Faith in him. And faith in his plan for salvation.
09:41 So that is a picture of the tower. The tower is made of rock. Amen.
09:45 We talk about fortress, my rock, my rock. It’s in 2 Samuel 22:3. It’s in Psalm 18,:2. My rock. What is a rock? I mean, I look this up.
09:57 The hardest substance known to man is a rock, a diamond. That’s still, it’s an expensive rock, but it’s still a rock. Amen.
10:04 Now, think about this. The God that created everything has a Bible that will never diminish and never deteriorate. And in his Bible, he tells us that he is like the strongest substance that we’ve ever known.
10:19 Just think about that. That should get you excited. Amen.
10:24 And let me tell you this, because when I think of a diamond, they say it’s really hard to cut and so forth, but they cut them because they sell them. Amen. They found a way to cut them, lasers or something.
10:34 God is not able to be cut. God is saying, I’m going to compare myself to something that you could understand, but God is so much stronger than the strongest substance we’ve ever seen.
10:44 God is so much mightier than anything that we could ever imagine.
10:49 In the Bible, I love these verses. Every once in a while, God will say in the Bible, is my hand weakened?
10:57 Am I not strong enough? Come on. I mean, the Lord has all power, all strength to do as he pleases.
11:02 Amen. You know, it’s hard to fill up a cup of water, two cups of water and walk around with that all day long. And God has the whole ocean and says, you’ll stop right here.
11:12 You won’t go any further. That’s our God. Amen.
11:19 And when he brings the storm, that’s our God. And on and on and on. God has all power.
11:25 This high tower, our God is a deliverer. When you enter that high tower, you are delivered from that evil. It is a promise that he will deliver you.
11:30 This is our God. You know, what are you actively doing in the tower to fend off the enemy? Nothing. The tower is doing the work.
11:38 You just simply believed the tower was fortified. It was able to. The tower is doing the work.
11:44 You’re just occupying the tower. You’re just saying, I believe this tower is strong enough. I’m going here.
11:49 And that goes back to my original point. There’s a battle raging. People try to do things in their own strength and God is saying that’ll never work.
11:58 And anyone that’s been in the ministry has had a time where you’ve tried to do something in your own strength and said, I can’t do it. And God wants us in that place where we turn to him. Paul writes that when he was weak, he was made strong by God.
12:12 And that when he is weak, when his infirmities, Paul actually writes that he glories in his infirmities because it shows the strength of God. You know, I go somewhere, I have allergies. You may hear it in my voice today.
12:22 I have, we go to a tent meeting and so forth and my allergies, you know, the grass outside and so forth. Hey, they get me. Amen.
12:28 That’s where we’ve been this week. I think that’s part of the reason I sound the way I do. And I’ll just say this prayer to God, God, I know we’re here to praise you.
12:37 Lord, strengthen me and oh, how that strength will come upon me. Maybe not instantaneously. You know, the Lord, uh, he’s sometimes he can be subtle, you know, but I’ll have that strength and I’ll come back and say, man, that’s amazing.
12:49 I didn’t, you know, have an asthma attack. You know, I slept through the night. Amen.
12:54 Lord blessed. And the point I’m making is when, when we are sufficiently weak, his power is exemplified. And when we go to the tower to get in the tower, we don’t need to be strong.
13:06 We just need to believe that tower will protect. We need to believe that we’ll have leverage. We have the advantage over the enemy.
13:13 There’s scripture. And I wish I’d looked this up. I need to where a enemy is coming and somebody drops a rock on a mighty general.
13:20 And I think it’s a woman or a kid or something drops a rock on that general from a tower and kills the general. And they’re humiliated by dying that way. I think they have a fellow soldier, just kill them, you know, put their sword in her heart just to not die that way.
13:32 But you have leverage in the tower. Amen. You’re no longer vulnerable to the world.
13:38 Amen. And I could go on and on. We haven’t even gotten to the point of the watchman.
13:42 We’ll pick that up on the next episode. But God’s a high tower. And he desires us to go to him in faith.
13:52 And when we go to him in faith, oh, how he will protect us. Oh, how he will preserve us. Oh, how he will strengthen us.
14:00 Not by anything that we do, but by his great grace and mercy. He’s told us through his word. All we have to do is appropriate it to our lives.
14:08 Will you do that today? I thank you for listening. Tune in next time as we get to the next part in this series on God being a high tower. Take care, God bless, and amen.