Names of God | Week 4 | Daniel Goulding | Full Service

The big idea

God fights for us, but He also wants to fight through us — we are not the underdogs we think we are.

God has not left us to face our battles alone — He fights for His people, but He also invites His people to fight alongside Him. Just as Israel had to engage in their first real battle with Amalek, we have to become aware there is a real fight, engage it, and refuse to fight it alone.

Point 1 of 8

Pastor Daniel sets up Exodus 17 by recounting Israel's history from slavery in Egypt through the Red Sea, showing that up to this point God had always intervened for them. In their first real fight against Amalek, God instead empowers them to fight, teaching them a new way of engaging battle.

Point 2 of 8

Amalek attacked the stragglers — the women, children, elderly, and sick — right after Israel had stepped into freedom, showing that the enemy does not fight fair. Pastor Daniel connects this to how temptation and attack often come right after we surrender our lives to Jesus, and names our sin nature as the primary enemy we wrestle on this side of eternity.

Point 3 of 8

Moses takes the staff of God up the hill without being explicitly told to by God in this instance, relying on what he'd seen God do with it before — turning it into a snake, striking the Nile, parting the Red Sea, bringing water from a rock. Pastor Daniel calls this spiritual maturation: trusting God will use what He's used before.

Point 4 of 8

Three elderly men — Moses, Aaron, and Hur — figure out together how to keep the staff lifted all day, illustrating that even the leader God chose needed others to hold him up when he grew weak. Pastor Daniel notes the battle looked ludicrous to outsiders but was essential to victory.

Point 5 of 8

Pastor Daniel names the lie that Christianity is just going through the motions, that faith merely informs how we vote, and that the enemy is content with a church that walks out no different than it walked in. He urges having a vision for marriage, family, and purity, since without vision people just meander through life.

Point 6 of 8

Prayer isn't appeasing God or balancing a scoresheet of good and bad deeds — it's how we prepare for battle. Pastor Daniel says the church must wake up and remember that real spiritual battles, not just physical fixes like filters on a computer, are what we're actually up against.

Point 7 of 8

Drawing on Aaron and Hur, Pastor Daniel urges an honest look at who we spend the most time with, since we'll become the average of the five people closest to us. He contrasts friends who pour gasoline on our fires with friends who bring buckets of water, pointing to forgiveness and counsel rather than escape from marriages and relationships.

Point 8 of 8

Pastor Daniel highlights that Joshua's Hebrew name, Yeshua, is the same word translated Jesus, making him a foreshadowing of the Messiah fighting in the field. Moses on the hill with arms outstretched between two men mirrors Jesus on the cross with arms outstretched between two thieves, the ultimate declaration of victory over sin.

Take it into your week

Pastor Daniel frames the response as learning to fight the way Israel had to: become aware of the battle, engage it, and never fight it alone.