We start a new series on the Names of God. This week Bill will start off our series as we examine Yahweh Tsebaoth. Join us as we learn more about God from the meaning of his names.
Handout | PowerPoint | Transcript
Happy belated 4th of July. Is that a thing? I don’t know. Hopefully everybody’s still got all their fingers and toes right.
Today we’re starting a new series, the Names of God. And names are important to us. Names are important, right? Names can bring joy, they can bring hope, they can bring despair. Think about the emotions that you feel as you hear different names. The name of Jesus brings power, right? But take a moment. Just try and relax. Just try and clear your mind for a second, and just think about the emotions that come forward when I say some of these names. Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, or Messi or Gretzky or Babe Ruth. Pick your sport. Saddam Hussein, Mother Teresa, Adolf Hitler, Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela. Different names make us feel different, right? You felt a range of emotions as those names came across. Because names are important. Names are important.
Some of us got called names growing up, right? Kids can be cruel. And it’s not just the kids. Adults can be cruel, too. And we call each other names, and our name is important. Our name matters to us. In some ways, our name kind of represents us. We want to have a good reputation. When people say our name, we want them to have a good feeling, right? Some ways, our names are us. Think about a time when somebody forgot your name and somebody that should have remembered your name. I’m not talking about one guy you met, you know, three years ago and he couldn’t remember your name. Somebody that should have remembered your name. How did that make you feel? Not so good, right? Maybe like you’re unimportant or you don’t matter. And that terrifies me because I will forget some of your names. I work so hard at learning everybody’s name. I do. Do you know that I keep files with people’s names in them so I can go back and refer to them to help me remember. I work hard at remembering people’s names, and I still forget them. And it’s gotten worse as I get older. I must have been seven before I knew my own name. It’s just. It’s really hard, okay? And I don’t want to make anybody feel bad because I forgot their name. So if I forget your name, please, Grace, know that I am trying to. I really do try, but our name represents us.
And we see this in ancient cultures, right? God changes the name of Abram to Abraham, which means the father of many nations. And when Abraham and Sarah are well past childbearing age, and the angel says, you’re going to have a child, and Sarah does what? Laughs. And when the child is Born, they name him Isaac, which means laughter. Years later, Isaac’s son Jacob is wrestling with an unknown force who we believe to be the Lord. And he changes his name from Jacob to Israel, the one who struggles. And names mean something.
How many of you? Just a show of hands. How many of you know what your name means? Half of us. Half of us. The other half, you have homework. There’s an Internet. Look that up. See what your name means. I wasn’t going to tell this story. I hope I don’t get in trouble. When it was time to name our boys, Linda put her foot down and said, I can’t name him William. My grandfather was William. My dad was William. I’m William. My aunt, my dad’s sister married a guy named William. She said, no more Williams. I said, okay. So we named him Evan, which is the Welsh form of William. You got to know what your names mean, right? You got to know what your names mean.
Some of you remember that last year we did Names of God for one of our small group series. We looked at six names. We’re going to do a smaller version here. Part two. We’re going to look at four different names this year, and we’re going to start out with the name Yahweh Tsebaoth. Okay? We’re going to practice it. We’re going to practice it. The T is silent. Don’t get me started on silent letters because I don’t want to answer any questions or I’m going to knock somebody on the head. Okay? Silent letters, the bane of my existence. Okay, so we have Yahweh. We know the word Yahweh, right? What does Yahweh mean? God, Right. I am. It’s God. This was the personal name for God for the Israel nation. It meant that God was dwelling with us. It was a personal God who dwells with us, who lives with us. And his name was so holy, they didn’t even want to say it. Okay, so we’ve got Yahweh Tsebaoth. So the syllable comes between the A and the okay, so it’s almost like Sabbath, but it’s not the Sabbath. It’s Seba E, Seba oth, Seba oth. Let’s practice it. Yahweh Tsebaoth. Okay, but you got to say it fast. Yahweh Tsebaoth. Okay, you got it easy, right? As long as you know that stupid letter is silent. Okay? And what it means is the Lord of hosts. And it also means the Lord of angel armies, the Lord of earthly armies. And the Lord God Almighty. We’ll get into that. Because that can be a little confusing, but we’ll get into that. Okay.
And so here we have this name. And this is very. This name, like I said, is very interesting to me. So let’s open our Bibles to First Samuel. This is the first time that we see this. This name use. And I’m going to go through a lot of texts, and I’m going to have them up here. I didn’t have room in your notes to put them all, but there should be references there for you to go home and check my work. Check my work. Okay, so our first one is 1st Samuel 1:3. We’re going to look at this, and I’m going to look at this in a couple different versions. But our first one is Niv. Samuel is written by who? Samuel. Not a trick question. Okay. Samuel was written by Samuel. And this is the first time that this word is used. We’re gonna look at, like I said, a couple different versions. 1st Samuel 1:3. Year after year, this man, and this man is Samuel’s father went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh, where Hophnia and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli were priests of the Lord. All right, cool. Lord Almighty, Right? Let’s look at the Christian Standard Bible. This man would go up from his town every year to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of armies. Wait, the other one said the Lord Almighty. This one says the Lord of armies at Shiloh, where Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were the Lord’s priests. Okay, let’s look at King James. And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were the priests of the Lord. Were there. All right, let’s settle it. Let’s go look at the NOG version, the Names of God. Version. And this says every man this. Every year, this man would go up from his own city to worship and be sacrificed. To whom? Yahweh Tsebaoth. At Shiloh, Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas served there as priests of Yahweh.
So we have four versions, four different words. Which one’s right? All of them. All of them are right. And I know some of you that are King James fans are going, no, King James is right. Just a joke. Just a joke. They’re all right. See, Yahweh, Tsebaoth represents the Lord of hosts. It’s a general term of the host. And this can refer to the host of heaven, the stars. We can refer to the host of the angels. It can refer to the host of people. It can refer to the host of birds in the field. It can refer to anything. It’s a general term. He is the Lord of the hosts, and that includes the Lord of the armies and the Lord Almighty. They’re all the same. It’s like if you have the name William, you might have a nickname, Bill or Billy or Will or Willie. If you’re Robert, you might be Bob or Bobby. If you’re Samuel, you might be Sam or Sammy. If you’re Samantha, you might be Sam or Sammy. If you’re Rebecca, you might be Becky. If you’re Elizabeth, you might be Liz or Lisa. Right? We understand this, and there’s times when one term is maybe more appropriate than another. When you get into trouble. What word did your mother use? The full name. That’s how we all know our middle name, because there’s times when that’s appropriate. But your friends don’t call you by your full name. You know, when they call you up on the phone, hey, what’s going on? And use your full name, you’d like, hang up on them. That guy doesn’t know me. Right? So we get this. We get this. By the way, when you look. Want to look these things up, I go to BibleGateway.com it’s on the Internet. It’s free. They’ve got, man I don’t know how many versions. There’s all kinds of versions. You go look up all these different translations. So you want to check out BibleGateway.com
All right, so this Yahweh Tsebaoth is. It means the Lord of the armies. And it’s a specific descriptive translation of the more general Hebrew term Yahweh Tsebaoth. It emphasizes one aspect of God’s power and authority, which is his command over angel forces. However, the scope of the armies or the host referred to in Yahweh Tsebaoth can be broader and can include heavenly bodies, angel armies, and even the natural world.
Stay in Samuel. But let’s look real quick at. At Genesis 2, 1. This is right at the end of creation. It says, thus the heavens and the earth were finished. And what else was finished? All the host of them. Now, if you look this up in the niv, it doesn’t say that because we don’t talk that way anymore. What’s a host? The person who greets you at the restaurant. Right? And we don’t refer. We don’t go out to the desert and look up at the night’s valley, look at the host of stars. We don’t say that. It’s correct. If somebody says that, you know what they mean. But we don’t say that. We look up the stars and go, look at all the stars. There’s a lot of stars up there. If you were one of the pioneers coming across the plains in a covered wagon and you came across the massive herds herds of bison, would they have said, look at that host of bison? No, it’s correct. You would understand that. But that’s not how we talk. Okay, so some of the older versions, RSV, King James uses this host of them. Newer versions tend not to use that. Both are correct. It’s just how we talk.
Okay, but so we have this host. God is in control of the supernatural, the angels, he’s control all the host of everything on the earth. He’s the God of hosts. Okay, you’re still in Samuel. Let’s turn over a couple of chapters to first, Samuel 17. This is the story of David and Goliath. And we know this story. So real quick summary. We’ve got two hills with Israelites and their arch enemy, the Philistines. Between them is a low spot. It’s not a valley. Valley is too grandiose for what this little low spot is. It’s a ravine, it’s a depression. It’s just a low spot between these kind of two hills. And for 40 days, the armies come out in the morning chanting their war cries. Can you hear the army come out? Oh, oh, oh. I don’t know what their war cry is. Right? But here they are and they all get out there and they stand out there chanting at each other. And then Goliath comes out. Nine feet tall, nine inches, I can’t even imagine. The size of this human being is beyond comprehension. And he yells and curses at them and he wants to fight, mano a mano, winner take all. And the Israelites hear that and they all get afraid and run back to their tents. Now how, if that happens for 40 days, like on day 39, you’ve run back to your tents and hide. On day 40, doesn’t that affect your war cry coming out in the morning? Hasn’t your war cry gone from [deep grunts] to [whimpy sounds]. Okay, you ready? We’re going to have to run here in a couple minutes, right? I don’t know what’s going on here.
This story is kind of unusual and of course I touch my screen and everything goes away. So. Well, that’s no good. Cancel. Start. Thank you. Okay. So, of course we know David has been sent to check on his brothers who are in the Army. He gets there, sees what’s happening, and he says, you can’t defy the God of Israel. He says, I’ll go fight him. And everybody says, what? You can’t go fight him. You’re just a boy. We don’t know how old David was. He’s between maybe 13, 15, 16. What does that make you, eighth grade? Freshman, sophomore, maybe Junior? He’s just a kid. You can’t… Have you seen Goliath? He’s nine feet. You haven’t even come into your man body yet. You’re still a boy. So Saul gives him his armor. He can’t even walk in the armor. He strips it off. It’s a great lesson there. You can’t live in somebody else’s faith. You need your own faith. Of course, we know. David runs down to the brook, picks up five stones, puts them in his bag, and let’s pick the story up. 1st Samuel 17, 45, 47. I’m reading from the CSB. I have switched from NIV to CSB for no theological reason. They make the print bigger in this one. So here we are.
David said to the Philistine, you come against me with a sword, a spear and a javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of armies, the God of the ranks of Israel. You have defied him. Today the Lord will hand you over to me. I will strike you down, remove your head and give the corpses of the Philistine camp to the birds of the sky and the wild creatures of the earth. And then all the world will know that Israel has a God. And this whole assembly will know that it is not by sword or by spear that the Lord saves. For the battle is the Lord’s and he will hand you over to us.
And I can’t imagine the look of disbelief on Goliath’s face. Right? Goliath is like, you can’t even break my finger. How are you going to cut off my head? Of course we know how that story goes. Okay? But see, the thing we got to know about this story is so many times we make this story about Goliath and how he didn’t believe in God. Or we make the story about David and how he learned how to handle small problems as he tended the sheep, and that enabled him to be ready for the big problems of life. I’m here to tell you, the story is not about Goliath and it’s not about David. The story is about, is about Yahweh Tsebaoth, the Lord Almighty, the Lord of the armies. That’s who the story is about. And that God makes the impossible happen, right? That God makes the impossible happen.
And we’ve all been there where we’ve been facing a problem. Our metaphorical giant, right? It could be a physical problem, it could be a health problem, could be mental illness problem, could be a relationship problem, could be a work problem. Numerous ways we can have these problems. And I’ve always said that the way we handle our problems is we pray like it depends on God, but work like it depends on us, right? You got to pray like it depends on God, but you got to work like it depends on you. God gave you a brain, gave you hands, gave you things. He wants you to be involved, but sometimes you’ve done all the work you know how to do and the giant is still there and you’ve tried everything and it’s time to pray and it’s time to pray. I think we get that, we get that, and we’ve all been there.
And so today, instead of going real deep on that topic, because I think we all understand that, real quickly, I want to run through some ideas of how big our God is. And we’re not going to be able to cover that because I, I understand this much about God [small distance between fingers], but let’s look at a couple things that help us understand the bigness of our God.
Number one, he is the Lord of all the angelic hosts, right? Throughout God’s word, we will find the angels described as the host of heaven, and he is the Lord of all the hosts. First Kings 22 says, Then Micaiah, who was a prophet, by the way, this is a great story. If you don’t know him, you go look this up. Then Micaiah said, therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne. And how many people, the whole heavenly army was standing by him in his right hand and his left hand. How much of the army? The whole army. How many people are in the whole army? I don’t know, but Daniel 7:10 says, A river was flowing coming out of his presence. Thousands upon Thousands served him. 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. The court was convened and the books were opened. 10,000 times 10,000. Sounds like a lot. Matthew 25:31 says, when the Son of man comes in all his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his Glorious throne. How many of the angels are coming? ALL! Heaven is going to be empty that day. You ever think about that? Everybody’s coming here. That’s going to be quite a day. That’s going to be quite a day.
That thought should be one of great comfort to us. No matter how difficult things become here on Earth, God has at his disposal an invisible, invincible army ready to engage at a moment’s notice on our behalf. He’s not only the God of the angel armies, he’s the Lord of the entire universe. He’s Lord of the supernatural world. He’s Lord of our physical world, the entire universe. Genesis 1:16 says, God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule over the day, the lesser light to rule over the night, as well as the stars. How much did God make? All of it. Everything. How many of the stars? All of them. Big bang don’t make stars.
Okay, Genesis 2:1 we looked at earlier. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. Right? Remember when Jesus was here on Earth and there was a night when they were out on the boat and the waves and the storm. What does Yahweh Tsebaoth do? Stand up and tell the winds to be still. He is Lord of everything, even the wind. We can’t even predict the wind, let alone control it. Okay.
He’s not only the Lord of the universe, he’s the Lord of all created beings. And when I say created beings, I mean everything that walks, flies and swims. I think that covers everything, right? Crawls, any animal crawls. He’s Lord of it all. Okay, we know he’s Lord of the fowls of the air. In Genesis 8, in the story of the Flood, we see him using birds with Noah to see how much flood water is left. We know the ravens take care of the prophet Elijah at the brook.
Okay, so he controls the birds, he controls the beasts of the earth. The Bible says that the cattle on a thousand hills are his. But you really want to know if you can control the beast or not? I think you should ask Daniel. And I’m going to share something here. I hate most of the pictures that we see of Daniel in the lion’s den. You’ve seen these pictures. And here’s Daniel [holding his hand together praying], and he’s praying, and there’s a shaft of light coming down on him. He looks so holy. And the lions are all back here looking at him like, we dare not eat him. How do lions sleep? In a pile, right? They lay on each other and next to each other. And I have imagined this pile of lions in the bottom and Daniel laying down with them. I don’t think Daniel stood there all night. I think Daniel got tired and laid down and went to sleep with the lions. Maybe he’s got his head on the stomach of one, his legs up over another one. Just Daniel was the first one to have an adjustable bed. Got his head up and his feet up, laying over the lions. I don’t know. But God is the commander of the beasts of the earth.
He commands the fish in the sea. Of course, we know the story of Jonah. God commands a great fish to do his work.
And he’s the Lord of all humanity. And you know, the weird thing about this one is he’s the Lord of people who don’t even recognize him or recognize his power. And, you know, I think about the rulers and the nations and the kings and the presidents and the dictators and whatever kind of ruler you have that think they rule the earth. But Isaiah 40:15 says, look at the nations. They’re like a drop of bucket. A drop in a bucket. They’re considered as a speck of dust on the scales. And he lifts up the islands like fine dust. And the Bible is full of stories of God lifting one nation up and casting another down to match his plans. And he thwarts the plans of godless, wicked men. And there are so many nations that think that they don’t need him and fail to recognize Him. But the truth is that one day we all stand before God. And I wonder what will happen when Napoleon and Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and others march across that platform and realize how unimportant they really were.
So let’s finish up real quick. Ephesians, let’s turn to this. We know this verse. When we get here, you’ll recognize it. Ephesians 6:12. God reigns over all things. He reigns over the supernatural, the angels. He rules over the physical, the stars, the earth, all the beings, all the humanity. And Ephesians 6:12 says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens. Who’s our fight against? Satan. And Satan doesn’t recognize God’s authority, but one day, one day, he’s going to have to answer to that. Satan couldn’t lay a finger on Job until God allowed it. One more text. Last one. Matthew 28. Let’s turn to Matthew 28. Hopefully this is a little encouragement for us. Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20. Give me an amen when you get there. Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of who? all nations baptizing them. In who? the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to what? Obey. Observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always. To when? the end, the end of the age.
Is God going anywhere? He is Yahweh Tsebaoth. He is the commander of everything. Every atom in the universe answers to him. And he cares about you.
Reflection. What does the Lord of Hosts mean to you personally? Have you witnessed his power in your life?
Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe it was a family member. Where you saw something, be on the lookout for it. If you’re not looking for it, you’re likely to miss it. When it goes by, it’s like a freeway exit. You ain’t looking for it. All of a sudden it’s three miles behind you. And have you ever noticed every time you miss the off ramp, there’s not another off ramp for like 13 miles. And then you get off, but you can’t get on on that side. Pray like it depends on God. Work like it depends on you.
Our challenge is when you get to that point where you can’t do anything else, turn it over to God. Because sometimes we say, well, I’m going to let God do it. But we keep meddling and don’t tell God how to fix it. I’m so tired. I have done this so many times. God, what I need you to do is this. My life will be so much better if you would just fix this. I’ve learned it so much better. Say, God, I’ve got a problem and I need Yahweh Tsebaoth take care of it. He has resources I can’t even imagine. He’s got ways to fix it, to work on it that I can’t even consider right. Imagine the first time somebody got raised to the dead by the prophet. Nobody said, would you please come raise my son to the dead. Because that had never happened before. It’s not too hard for God. Don’t just turn it over to him. Ask the Lord Almighty, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the angel armies, to give you some assistance.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are Yahweh Tsebaoth. Lord, please be with us. Please help us. Please direct our ways. Please let us understand your presence. Lord. Please be there when we’re facing those giants that we don’t know what to do with. Your way is perfect. Our way is not. Lord, we just ask you to be control of our lives and to give us the courage to turn over control to you. We’ll be involved, but help us to listen to your commands, listen to your leading, and to do the things that you would have us do. For those of us that are facing some giant right now, Lord, give them strength. Let them know that you’re close by and that you have control of the situation. Be with us