-Transcript-
00:35 Amen, Glory to God, welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another KJV Cafe episode that will bless you.
00:45 I assure you that it’ll bless you and nothing I say or do but what the Lord can do by the work of the Holy Spirit as we talk about His name.
00:57 You know, God gives Himself many names in the Bible and if you were to think about these names, you could think about them all year or many years. If you were to preach on them, you could preach on them many, many years.
01:12 There are many names of God that He gives Himself in the Bible and these names have great significance and if we look into them, if we take the time to study God’s Word, to show ourselves approved, rightly dividing the Scriptures, the Word of Truth, God will bless us with the truth that we learn.
01:29 And today we’re looking at simply how God is a strong tower and I say simply because it is a powerful reference to the security that we find in God and it is an example that even a child could understand. You know, a child understands good, bad.
01:49 A child understands a battle. A child may understand vulnerability and a child would understand safety and security in that strong tower. So where do we find our help in this life?
02:00 Who do we turn to when tough times come? I hope it’s the Lord.
02:06 It should be the Lord. It needs to be the Lord here today. God wants us to know that He is the strong tower.
02:13 If a battle were raging and you knew a safe refuge that you could go to, why would you not? That’s a great question to ask yourself.
02:21 If God is a strong tower and if you are not seeking the Lord in times of trouble, why not? Proverbs 18:10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe.
02:35 Yeah, that’ll preach itself right there. There’s three points right there. The Lord is a strong tower.
02:45 The righteous runneth into it and is safe. That’s perfect. I mean, not much more needs to be said here, amen. We could save a little air time today and just wrap it up but look, at the same time, it’s worth expanding upon that God is a strong tower.
02:55 You know, we see in Proverbs 18.10, the writer Solomon, the son of King David, amen, was referencing God as a strong tower. And the Hebrew names work in a lot of really interesting ways.
03:08 I believe there’s a name or a title for how you research Hebrew names and I can’t even present that title to you but if you were in college, you probably could major in this or even get a degree in this because Hebrew names are so unique and so deep and so we see God’s chosen people, we see their naming styles, the way they name one another.
03:32 In the technology field, we talk about naming conventions or groups of names and so here we have ways that people call, or ways that names are created in the family-related names.
03:48 And King David, the son of Jesse, okay, is an example because you have King David, the son of Jesse. And so we see here that Jesse is the dad, David is the son, King David is referenced as the son of Jesse.
04:04 Just earlier I said Solomon wrote Proverbs, right, and Solomon is the son of King David. And interestingly enough, my wife heard this preaching on a Sunday morning and on a, I don’t know, was Monday or Tuesday, there was a Bible quiz in her work chat or something and they asked who was Jesse and she said she was kicking herself that she couldn’t quickly answer that. She said, I should know that.
04:33 I said that was literally the example we gave. But that is an example of one way that people were named back then or people were referring to one another through family lineage, right. And I guess today we still do that.
04:45 I mean, our youngest son is Clark Jr., CJ, and so it’s, you know, the son of Clark, I guess. Names also can be descriptive. Esau, which means red, you know, he had red hair, the red bean soup, on and on.
04:57 That’s Esau. And then, of course, we’ve spoken here about in previous episodes how names could mean a specific thing, like Rebecca means sheep rope, Esther’s Jewish name Hadassah means myrtle. I learned this recently, Luke means luminous or white.
05:12 And so there’s all these ways that we can look at names with deeper meanings. And if you want to get very specific in the Hebrew alphabet, I believe the letters have like a numeric, like a number significance as well.
05:26 And so you really can dive deep in this and it’s beautiful what God will reveal to you as you study this.
05:31 So I encourage you to study Hebrew names. It goes way deeper than this, than what I’ve described. I’ve kind of, I’m sure if a Hebrew name professor was listening to this, they’d be shaking their head and like, wow, this guy needs to study up.
05:42 But I’m here to try to get you just enough information that you understand why a name matters in this language and that it’s significant and that we can understand through what God often does through our own families and so forth, more about God’s character.
06:01 And as we understand more about God’s character, we can love him that much more, draw closer to him and so forth. So hopefully we’ve accomplished that here today.
06:08 If not, just keep listening and eventually it’ll rub off. So today, we’re going to look at an idea of if we’re going to be running to the tower or away from the tower, if God is a high tower. In previous episodes, we’ve looked at what is a high tower, what is a strong tower, who’s in that high tower, the watchman.
06:30 We’ve looked at scriptures that reference this. Psalm 61, three, for that has been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy.
06:38 Psalm 18:2, the Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my buckler and the horn of my salvation and my high tower.
06:51 There’s over a hundred references to tower in the Bible and the King James Bible. And we know that God’s compared himself to the hardest substance known to man, a rock. A diamond is the hardest substance known to man.
07:04 That is still a rock. It’s an expensive rock, but it’s still a rock. Amen.
07:09 And we see that in that tower of the watchman that goes before you, like the Lord goes before you, Deuteronomy 31:8, the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee. He will be with thee. He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee, fear not, neither be dismayed.
07:24 So we’ve talked about in previous episodes here about Deuteronomy 31, eight, this idea that fear often results from a lack of knowledge from the unknown. We’re fearful because we don’t know. Amen.
07:38 Like going into a foreign country and you don’t know anyone, you probably have some fear and anxiety because you just don’t know anyone. You don’t know the culture. You don’t know what’s going on.
07:45 And you say, okay, well fear could enter the picture. And Deuteronomy 31, eight tells us we don’t need fear. And that’s so important to understand that God has not given us the spirit of fear.
07:57 Let’s just look at that verse here,2 Timothy 1:7. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power andof love and of a sound mind. Amen. I love that verse.
08:09 Power, love, and sound mind, not fear. Amen. So we aren’t to fear because he’s gone before us.
08:17 He’s proactively protecting us. He’s leading us down the paths of everlasting life. Amen.
08:23 Now we’ve talked a lot about God’s strong tower, not just this episode, but in past episodes, how God refers to himself as this rock, this strong tower, how we are to go to that tower. Right. And yet many people don’t.
08:40 And many people don’t go to God’s tower. Amen. To keep the reference going, but they go to a tower made by men.
08:48 Not all towers are godly. You know, maybe one of the most famous towers that man has ever tried to build. And I just recently saw a major cable news station interviewing an archeologist with proof that this was actually built.
09:06 They have stamps and dating and all that stuff to say this is actually biblically correct, not just biblically accurate, but historically correct. So even the secular lost people agree that this existed. And this is the tower of Babel.
09:21 If you haven’t figured it out yet, or the tower of Babel, I just call it Tower of Babel because it’s referring to like the word babbling. So that’s why I say that. But I’ve heard people say Babel, so you can take a pick with Genesis 11:4-5
09:31 And they said, go to let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven. And let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
09:52 Genesis 11:9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth. And from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
10:01 So there you have it, the tower of Babel, Tower of Babel, the Lord, what did he do? That’s where he confounded the language. Can you go to that tower today and spend time in it and look up in the heavens? You can’t, you can’t go there. I wonder who knocked it down.
10:17 Could it be the God of all creation? Could it be the God whose right hand is not shortened? His strength is not depleted. Could it be the God almighty of King David and of Jesus Christ and of you and I today?
10:31 Could it be that that God took down that tower? Is that a hard thing for him to do? Is it hard for you to pick up a pen to blink your eye to, uh, to, I don’t know, sneeze to, to take a walk.
10:44 Is it hard for you to do those things? It’s easier for God to knock down man’s manmade tower as high as it was, however many people or slaves or whoever it was that built that thing.
10:54 It is harder for man to do the littlest thing, to pick up a bottle cap, to take a sip of water, uh, to grab a tissue. It’s harder for us to do that than it is for God to knock that thing down. It’s not hard for him.
11:05 Amen. That’s nothing for him. And the point I’m trying to make is man still goes to these manmade towers instead of going to an all powerful God.
11:16 And this may be another message for another time, but does that not deal with a faith issue? Is it not faith that we are struggling with here today?
11:26 Because if man truly believed as Hebrews11:6, which I quote pretty much every episode that God is a, uh, that you, it’s impossible to please God without faith.
11:37 And that he’s a rewarder of the, them that diligently seek him. Uh, and them that believe I’m paraphrasing big time here, but them that believe on him, he’s a rewarder of them that have faith.
11:48 Okay. And so you’d be rewarded by believing in this all powerful God. And yet, uh, you cannot please God when you’re running to man.
11:57 So not only are you not pleasing God, but you’re not in an effective tower. Again, if this was a strong tower, we could go see it. Amen.
12:02 Hey, you ever go over to Europe before? I’ve been to Europe one time when I was in early twenties. Amen. I got to go over there on a bicycling trip.
12:11 And if you’ve seen me, you’d be surprised, but yep, they got big bicycles. So I was hopping on that thing, riding around and there’s castles that are hundreds of years old in Europe and they’re just there.
12:20 You know, I actually, I say Europe, I went to France, I was in France and you go in France and it’s absolutely gorgeous.
12:27 And there was like rural areas and there was his castles and it’d be like, no big deal. You know, here we are in the country, you know, you drive down the street and you might see a silo, right?
12:34 You might see a grain, grain elevator or something. And our kids will say, you know, silo, grain elevator, you know, you might see some cattle that in the rural area, that’s nothing.
12:41 You know, you drive around Lawndale, Kayser, Polkville, Kings Mountain, these areas, you know, they’re just everywhere, right?
12:47 Well, in France, it’s not, maybe not everywhere, but Hey, there’s a lot of castles. They’re just there. You know, Hey, those are pretty strong buildings.
12:57 Okay. Now this tower of Babel was supposed to be strong, but it’s not there. It’s not even as strong as some of these other things made.
13:02 And, um, that’s number one, but number two, even these castles are only so old, but who is God? He’s the eternal God. And so we see here that humans, they place their trust in man and they place their trust in man who has, is fallen.
13:19 And here it says that this, this tower of Babel, uh, caused all languages to be created because apparently up to then there was a universal language.
13:33 So what does this mean? It means that the consequences of turning to man and his faulty tower are great and they have great consequences. You know, I look at Australia, 9,000 miles plus away from America,
13:42 and they have different languages and so forth in Asia and Europe and all these other places, and it’s all rooting back to man’s weak, weak tower. So let’s not repeat history here.
13:54 Let’s not go to man’s weak tower. Let’s go to the strong tower, which was and is and will be Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And let’s not play games.
14:04 Let’s trust in God for our security. Tune in next time as we look at the idea of running to that strong tower instead of running away from it. I thank you so much for listening.
14:16 Take care, God bless, and amen.