Lord, I Want To Know You – Lesson 13

LORD, I WANT TO KNOW YOU – LESSON 13 ”The LORD of Hosts – Jehovah sabaoth” Kay Arthur, Teacher

Are you in conflict, suffering affliction, in warfare? Call on Jehovah-sabaoth, the LORD of hosts. This is the name we want to look at. But before we look at that name, I made a promise at our last lesson to finish telling you how to know when peace leaves, or how to know what happens that causes your peace to leave. I gave you several things, and I want to review those very quickly before we study the LORD of hosts, and you will see that Jehovah-shalom (The LORD is our peace) and the LORD of hosts really go together. As a matter of fact, haven’t you seen how all the names blend together, and how one runs into the other? He is Jehovah-shalom, the LORD our peace. He is our peace, and peace leaves us: (1) when our externals are in disarray, when our circumstances, or things without, are troubling us. (2) Peace leaves when imaginations invade our mind, when anxious thoughts come our way. (3) Peace leaves us when we are not filled with the Spirit; because the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace. (4) Peace leaves us when our relationships are out of kilter. (5) Peace leaves when you are not in the will of God. Peace will leave you when you not in the total, absolute, complete will of God. To be in the complete, total, absolute will of God is to have wisdom from above on how to handle a situation. Let me show you about that wisdom. Go to James 3:13. “Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. (14) But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. (15) This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, and demonic. (16) For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.” [I would love to camp on that, but we don’t have time.] (17) “But the wisdom from above” [When you have God’s wisdom, when you have God’s will. What is wisdom? It is knowing how to take truth and apply it to life. Wisdom is the application of knowledge. Wisdom is walking in truth. It is the practicality, the living out of truth.] “is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. (18) And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” I had a decision to make in leadership. It was a tremendous decision, because it was dissolving one whole department within our ministry. But I felt like I had to do it. Leadership means that you have to follow the will of God, no matter whether anybody understands or does not understand, you have to do what God is saying. Fortunately, the management team was behind me in this decision. I went through a lot of wrestling, and I made the move that I needed to make. And yet, I was troubled in my heart over one particular person. Did I have the mind of God on that person? Did I have the will of God? Listen, I had thought everything out that I knew to think out, and yet, I still in my heart did not have peace. I went to the Lord, and cried to the Lord, “Father, I am just in agony. I am so troubled, and I think I have checked out everything, and I do not know what to do.” I began to wrestle with the Lord, and wrestle with the Lord. Listen, when you lack peace deep in your heart, that is the time to wrestle with the Lord, to find out what the will of God is. You can find out what the will of God is if you are living according to Romans 12:1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies to God, to present your bodies to Him, a living and holy (set apart) sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. (2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” If you know that you have the will of God, in your heart it will be good, it will be perfect, and it will be acceptable, and you will have peace. I believe that when you finally come to it in every aspect, then you will have total peace. I cried out to the Lord; I wrestled with Him all morning in prayer. And then, all of a sudden, (and this is how God speaks to me) He put a thought in my mind. When that thought is from Him, all of sudden, there is a clicking, a fitting together, and a jibing (so to speak). There is a correlation; there is harmony; there is a peace. I made a phone call, and it was the answer. As soon as I heard that, I cannot tell you, but peace flooded my soul. Sometimes, when you don’t have peace, you need to go back to God; you need to

1 wrestle with God in prayer until you get the wisdom which is from above, which is peaceable, which is gentle, which is easy to be entreated, etc. I have got to move on. (6) When peace leaves, check and see if God wants to reveal something to you, or give you a burden. Sometimes you will not have peace because you will be burdened. You heart is troubled—absolutely troubled, and there is no peace at that time. There is no peace at all. So what do you do when that happens? You go to the Lord. He is Jehovah-shalom, and you wrestle with Him and that burden. I believe that many times He has given you that burden, which is His burden, so that you might pray, so that you might intercede, so that you can pray for the things that touch His heart. (7) Peace leaves when there is sin in your life. I see this all the time as I open my mail. I have a letter right here, and this woman just cries out, “After writing you a six page letter yesterday, and tearing it up today, I want to tell you the bare facts and why I need help—spiritual help, and lots of prayer. For the past four years I have been involved with another man, a man I love very much. As a former strong Christian, living in a state of sin is akin to a form of hell. There is no peace there.” This is an anonymous letter; I don’t even know who it is from. I want to take that person, and wrap my arms around them, and tell them what to do to get back that peace. What you do is this: (1) You confess your sin. (1 John 1:9) When you confess it that implies repentance. There is a turning away from that sin, and I want to tell you something, you may think you are going to die without that man. You may think life is not worth living. I want to tell you something, it is not worth living without the peace of righteousness that comes from the Prince of Peace. No man, no human being, no circumstances, no tinsel of the world can satisfy you, or is worth the price of the peace that comes from righteousness. So you must forsake that sin. (2) Then you must remember Romans 4:25. “He was raised because of our justification. (5:1) Therefore having been justified (declared righteous is God’s eyes, put in right standing with God) by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (2) through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.” You will not have peace if you have sin. When you confess you sin, you still may not have peace unless you understand the forgiveness of God. And you will not understand the forgiveness of God if you do not understand the grace of God. Grace is unmerited favor, and if you are child of God, you have peace with God, and you stand in the grace of God. It is by grace that you are saved; it is by grace that your sins are taken care of. So you need to handle sin God’s way, and that is by confessing it, turning from it, and then by remembering that you stand in the grace of God. You have peace with God, and by faith you claim that, and go on. Let’s look at the LORD of hosts. Go to 1 Samuel 1:3. This is the first time you the word used, but as you see it used, it is different from all the other times. It does not say, “Thou art Jehovah-sabaoth.” It does not say that. It simply calls Him the LORD of hosts. When Samuel opens up, it is still the day of the judges. Samuel will be the last judge. So this is a time of darkness; this is a time of distress. The name is used the first time in 1 Samuel 1:3. “Now this man (Elkanah) would go up from his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were priest to the LORD there.” [Elkanah goes up, and he takes Hannah to worship. Hannah is his favorite wife, but Hannah is barren. Elkanah has another wife, and she has had children. That wife is causing affliction and distress in the heart of Hannah, because she constantly derides her for not having a child.] Hannah goes into the temple, and she worships God. (10) “And she, greatly distressed, prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. (11) And she made a vow and said, ‘O LORD of hosts (Jehovah-sabaoh), if Thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of Thy maidservant and remember me, and not forget Thy maidservant, but wilt give Thy maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life.” This name of God is a name that you are to use in a time of affliction, in the time of conflict, in the time of warfare. Listen, our warfare is going to get more and more open, and more and more blatant. We have (as I teach this) a training program going on, and we have 107 people here. We have people from seven foreign countries. This couple right down here, Des and June, are from Australia, and they picked up my book, How Can I Live. There is a whole month on spiritual warfare, and it was through their reading that book that they began to write me. They understood the spiritual warfare, they understood the 2 conflict that Christians are in, and they knew God’s name, Jehovah-sabaoth. They knew that, and they understood that, because they knew that He was the LORD of hosts, the One that you cry to in affliction, in conflict, and in warfare. The warfare in Australia is very, very great. The suicide rate there is very high. There is a conflict for the souls of man. We met through that book, and wrote, and now they have come to be trained to take Precept back. When you look at the word sabaoth, it means a mass—a mass of people, a mass of heavenly beings, a mass of angels, or an army of heavenly hosts. It means the God is the LORD; He is Jehovah; He is the self- existent one. You put a triangle at the top of your notes, and then underneath it He is over all the angelic hosts. He is over all the armies of heaven. He is over all the powers, all the principalities, all the leaders and rulers in high places. This is a whole angelic host between the second and third heaven. He is LORD over all of that. This is important, because our conflict is not with flesh and blood. Our conflict is with spiritual wickedness in high places. In other words, when there is a personal conflict between two individuals, it is not just human beings in conflict. It is the enemy whispering thoughts into your ears, putting thoughts into your mind, putting imaginations and wrong thought, or anxious thoughts, or misunderstandings in your mind. So it is spiritual warfare. When a nation is against a nation, it is not simply Russia and the United States in conflict, or against one another (or Russia and Afghanistan). There are princes, spiritual, wicked princes, demonic forces, fallen angels that are rulers over nations. Our conflict is not against Gorbachev or others in Russia. Our conflict is against spiritual wickedness in high places, therefore we need to know that He is the LORD of hosts, that He is in control of all of this, and they can only go as far as God will let them go. You have studied, and you know that the greatest place that you see the name of God, LORD of hosts, is throughout the prophets, when you have this conflict between good and evil. But I want to show you 1 Samuel 4:10. You find them taking the ark of God. The battle is going poorly, and they figure that if they can get the ark of God (the ark of the covenant that was in the holy of holies with the cherubim on each side, showing that this is throne of God, and this is where the Shekinah glory was, and those cherubim showed the hosts that attend God), and take that ark into battle, then God would deliver them. They went into battle, and they were looking at that ark superstitiously. A lot of Christians have a superstitious relationship with God. It is a “if I do this, I push God’s button, and He has to do this. If I wave this spiritual wand, or this spiritual Scripture, then this will happen, and that will happen.” That is not true. It is obedience; it is righteousness; it is holiness that puts God on your side. These people had been disobedient to God, so they thought the ark of God would protect them when they went into battle. No! Because it wasn’t the ark, it was Who the ark represented, and that was Jehovah-sabaoth. You need to know that you are to be obedient. Look at 1 Samuel 4:10. “So the Philistines fought and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent, and the slaughter was very great; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. (11) And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.” [Now when the ark was taken, and Eli’s daughter (Phinehas’ wife) found out about it, she had a baby. She found out that her husband, Phinehas, was dead, then Eli, her father-in-law died, and then she had her baby.] (21) “And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel,’ because the ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband.” [What had happened? You would go in, and you would see His name, and you would see that the LORD had withdrawn His protection from them.] We won’t go into that because of time. I want to tell you four things that you need to remember when you are in affliction, when you are in conflict, when you are in warfare. You need (of course) to call upon Jehovah-sabaoth, and there are four things you need to remember in calling upon Him: (1) The battle is the Lord’s. The battle is never yours. This is in 1 Samuel 17:42-47. This is the story of David and Goliath. I want you to see this and remember it. In v. 42, Goliath has come against David, but he is really coming against God, because if you touch God’s anointed, you are touching God. (42) “When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him; for he was but a youth, and ruddy, with a handsome appearance. (43) And the Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. (44) The Philistine also said to David, ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.’ (45) 3 Then David said to the Philistine (I love it!), ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. (46) This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, …’” (47) “‘and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and He will give you into our hands.’” Tom, I want you to take about 2-3 minutes to tell this story. Tom is from Guatemala. We have been in Guatemala, and we are putting Precept in Guatemala. He is a professor in the seminary there, and travels through all the mountain ranges with the Indians there. I want Tom to share a story that he told me yesterday, so you can see how the LORD of hosts comes to our rescue. Tom’s story: A man up in the mountains of Guatemala received a summons. He was going to town (an eight-hour walk), and he said good-bye to his wife and three sons, and walked into town, not knowing what was going to happen. After he got into town, he was taken to jail. A few hours later one of his neighbors was brought in, and a man down the ridge of the mountains from where he lived. While they were in there, they were talking, and he witnessed to these two men, but they did accept Jesus Christ as Savior. He had his Bible, and all his papers taken away from him when he was put into jail, so he was trying to remember Scripture verses while he was in there. Finally, after a long time (about eleven or twelve hours) he was taken out and into a room. The other two men had left before him. When he got there, he saw the two men hanging, one was still partly alive (he says in his testimony), and when he saw that he realized that this was a very serious time. He called upon the name of God, and said, “Lord, you know I have not done anything wrong, and I am clear before You. If it is Your will, I will die, but if it is not, I want to go back and win my entire village for Your kingdom.” He asked a military man there for five minutes for his Bible. The military man was not even aware that his Bible had been taken away from him, so they went to look for his things. When they brought it, he pulled it out and read several Scripture verses. The man said, “What are you readying?” And he said, “I am reading some verses that are going to help me through this time.” The man said, “You are not afraid?” He said, “No, I am not.” He said, “Take him back to the cell.” He was taken back to the cell, and all that night he was there, and while he was in there he kept reading the Scriptures. One of them was Psalm 91:7. “A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” And other verses that came to his mind were Isaiah 43:2-3. (Look those up.) He was staying in the cell the next day, and his sister and his pastor came, and while he was in there, he heard the military man say, “He is gone; he has left here already.” (He was right on the other side of the wall, but he couldn’t say one word to his family.) But after several more hours, the military man came in and said, “You can put your shirt on. You can go.” This man has gone back, and has won his entire village to the Lord. We had the dedication for the chapel in May, and they had done this all on their own. They had not asked anyone for any help of any kind. So he did fulfill his promise to the Lord. Kay: Isn’t that neat? Thank you! He is the one that is charge, and you can trust Him. He is the LORD of hosts. This is the name that goes with El Elyon, the most high sovereign God. You need to remember that the battle is the Lord’s. That is the first thing you need to remember when you are afflicted, when you are in conflict, when you are in warfare. When this man walked into that office and saw those two men hanging there, and one of them had his feet still kicking, as the last ebb of breath was going out of his body, he looked at those men, and told those men that they could not take his life unless God gave them permission. He said, “If God gives you permission that is fine. But otherwise, you cannot kill me.” I want to tell you something—that is true, because His name is the LORD of hosts. You need to remember, when you are in conflict: (1) The battle is the Lord’s, and (2) He rules over all. You have His power. Go to Isaiah 14:12. He rules over all, and you have His power. In Isaiah 14, we have the description of Satan, and we see his fall from heaven. (12) “How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations!” [Why? Because Satan has an angelic host that is over the nations. He goes on in this prophecy about Satan.] (13) “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars 4 of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. (14) I will ascent above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High (Elyon).’ (15) Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit.” You need to remember this when you are in conflict: The battle is the Lord’s, and He rules over all. Satan, who tried to take the power from God, could not do it. He was cast down; he will go to the pit. He will be destroyed forever and ever, but not yet. Next to that reference to stars, write Job 38:1-7. It will show you that the stars were the angelic hosts that were there when God made the heavens and the earth. You see, in Ezekiel 28:12, another prophecy about Satan, and you see him there as the king of Tyre, a ruler over the nation or the city of Tyre. You see that Satan was created by God. You see this in Ezekiel 28:12-18. We are not going to go into that because of time, but I want you to see this. I want you to see that God is over Satan, so since the battle is the Lord’s, He can win the battle because He rules over all. He rules over Satan. You see this when Satan appears before the throne of God to condemn Job, and Satan says, “God, just let me touch Job, and You will see that he will curse You before Your face.” God says to him, “You may touch everything that he has, but you cannot touch his body.” Satan does not say, “I will touch his body if I want to!” He cannot, because God rules over all. The battle is the Lord’s, and He can win it because (2) He rules over all. One last verse in this, and I want you to turn to Luke 22:31. This is so good, and so vital, and it comes out in the New American Standard better than in the King James Version. Jesus looks at Peter, and says, “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat;” [Satan had to get permission from God before he could ever sift Peter as wheat. And I want to tell you something, precious one, no angelic host can ever touch you, come nigh to you, do anything to you, without God’s permission.] (32) “‘but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail;’” [God allowed Satan to touch Job’s flesh, and yet, in the end, Job came out stronger in his relationship with God than he was before. His faith did not fail. If God ever permits you to be tested, if God ever permits you to go into conflict or into warfare, His only goal is this—His glory and your good. Your faith will not fail, because He will not permit you to be tested above what you are able to endure. He always makes a way of escape.] The third thing I want you to see is this: (3) You need to remember that it is by His Spirit. Go to Zechariah 4:6. It is always by the Spirit, precious one; it is never by the flesh. I love this, and it is so good, and it kills me to have to do this so quickly. Zechariah is a book that is filled with the name of God, the LORD of hosts. You find God asking Zechariah what he sees. He sees a lampstand, and he sees a being on each side of the lampstand. (6) “Then he answered and said to me, ‘This is the word of the LORD (Jehovah) to Zerubbabel saying, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the LORD of hosts.’” [It is not by might; it is not by power, but it is by God’s Spirit, says the LORD of hosts. The Spirit of God does the bidding of God, does the perfect will of God.] (7) “What are you, O great mountain?” [Here was an obstacle, and he says,] “Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain;” [Any mountain, any obstacle, any hindrance before God’s Spirit becomes a plain.] “and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’ (8) Also the word of the Lord came to me saying, (9) ‘The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house (talking about the rebuilding of the temple), and his hands will finish it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.’” [When they were rebuilding the temple, when they were rebuilding the walls, there was all sorts of conflict and warfare, and he is saying, “It is not by might; it is not by power. It is by My Spirit. And what is a mountain to you will become a plain, because the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.”] (10) “For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven will be glad when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel—these (the plumb line, the standard, the thing that measures) are the eyes of the Lord which range to and fro throughout the earth.” Go to 2 Chronicles 16:7. Here we meet a king by the name of Asa, a king who was greatly strengthened by the Lord, a king who relied upon his God, and went to his God, and through his God defeated armies, moved mountains and made them a plain through the LORD of hosts. Then, one day, instead of relying on Jehovah- sabaoth, he relied on another king. Instead of relying on the LORD of hosts he relied on a human being. (7) “At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, ‘Because you have relied on the king of Assyria and have not relied on the LORD…’” [Remember, the battle is the 5 LORD’S. He rules over all. You are to know it is by His Spirit.] “‘therefore the army of the king of Assyria has escaped out of your hand. (8) Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the LORD, He delivered them into your hand.’” [This is the verse that I want you to get.] (9) For the eyes of the LORD move to and from throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” Are you afraid? Are you in conflict? Are you afflicted? Are you in warfare? It is not by might; it is not by power. Some trust in horses; some trust in chariots, but I will trust in the name of the LORD. His name is Jehovah-sabaoth. That is His name, and you must run to Him, and trust in Him. The fourth thing that you need to remember is: (4) Keep on your armor. If you have never studied Ephesians 6, and putting on the armor of God, I would suggest that you get our Warfare series that teaches you this. But Ephesians 6 says that our conflict, our warfare is not with flesh and blood, but it is against principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high place. Turn to Ephesians 6:10, and we will close with this. Let me read it to you so that you might understand that you are the victor through God. (10) “Finally, be strong in the LORD (the LORD of hosts), and in the strength of His might. (11) Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. (12) For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” [But that is all right, isn’t it? Because the battle is the Lord’s, and because He is over all of those wicked forces, and because it is not by might or by power, but it is by His Spirit. Therefore, all you have to do is put on the full armor of God.] (13) “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.” [And he tells you how to put on the armor of God.] He is the LORD of hosts who is in charge, and you can trust Him. The battle is the LORD’S, and because He is in you, greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world, and that is Satan. We are the victors, because He has won the victory. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” He is Jehovah-sabaoth, the LORD of hosts. Let’s pray. Father, we praise You, and we thank You for who You are, and for the fact that You are the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and very God of very Gods. We thank You, and we praise You that You are Lord of hosts, and that when we are in warfare, when we are in conflict, when we are in affliction, whether it is with an individual, whether it is with a nation, whether it is with other people, that there is victory through You. Not always deliverance, Father, but if there is not deliverance, there is still victory, because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Satan cannot keep us in his grip. How we praise You and how we thank You for that. How we thank You that death has been swallowed up in victory. How we praise You, Father, that You are the Lord of hosts. In Jesus’ name. Amen