Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 6, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Shaddai

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October 6, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Shaddai · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: So we're in a series called The Names of God this fall.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: If you're uh if this is your first time, we're in number five this morning, and we are at this name right here called El Shaddai.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Can you say that with me?
0:12
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: So uh this is not a name that you haven't heard before, I'm sure.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: These are the first four names we had.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: This first one was Elohim, which reflects God as creator.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Say Elohim.
0:24
unknown: Elohim.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Say then we had Adonai, say Adonai.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So if we worship Elohim, we obey Adonai because he's our Lord and our master, right?
0:34
SPEAKER_00: And the third name we had was Yahweh, which used more than all the other names combined.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: It's his personal name, the God who is here for us.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Say Yahweh.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great name.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Number four last week, El Rohi.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: El Rohi, this is the God who sees me.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: This name was given to him by a maidservant, an Egyptian maiden, and God accepted that name.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: That story was in Genesis 16, the first verse of the next chapter, by the way, is the first use of the name we're gonna do today, which is a familiar name to you, El Shaddai, God Almighty, right?
1:15
SPEAKER_00: We translate it that way.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: There, we don't know really.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Scholars don't know.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: They argue over where the word Shaddai came from.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: There are different options.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Some of them may be listed, one of them may be chosen by your translation in the margin.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: But it's pretty clear that by the time the Bible was being written, by the time of David and so forth, that whatever the root, the etymology of Shaddai, that it had come to mean Almighty.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Job chapter 37, Shaddai, whom we cannot fathom, is great.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: He is great in power.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the way we take it.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: That's what this word means, El Shaddai.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Trust me, God Almighty.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Now we are more familiar with this name, perhaps, than any other, the El Shaddai part, because of Michael Card's song made famous by Amy Grant about 30, 40 years ago, El Shaddai, El Sheldai Shaddai, El El Yonah, Adnai, age to age, you're still the same.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: You remember this song?
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Don't nod.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: You you kids are like 22.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: This is before your time.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, but you've heard it.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you've heard it, you've heard it.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: So it's a good song.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: So, um, but this is so common, this this name, this title, God Almighty, that it's been used, it's used by anybody and everybody.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: Patrick Henry, is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of slavery?
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Forbid it.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, give me liberty or give me death.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Franklin Graham, there's no question that America has been a nation blessed by Almighty God.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Marco Rubio, Almighty God is the source of all we have.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Charles Stanley, you can count on Almighty God to keep his word.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Ian Bounds wrote this great book on prayer.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Everybody read Ian Bounds 50 years ago.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: His little book on prayer is still wonderful.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God rules the world.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Most famously, Wilberforce and Martin Luther King, William Wilberforce, who spearheaded the extermination of slavery in Great Britain.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: God Almighty, he said, has set before me the suppression of the slave trade.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous line, say it with me.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
3:36
SPEAKER_00: So I want to tell you two things, two basic fundamental sort of factoids about El Shaddai, and then I'll give you the five lessons or the five things that I think God wants us to take away from this name.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: All right, and the two facts about it.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: First one you know, the second one you probably didn't.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: First one is that El Shaddai means God Almighty, God Almighty means God the omnipotent, omni means all potent, mighty, or powerful.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: So God is the superpower, basically, above all other powers.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: He's greater in power than anything else in the entire universe.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Anything or any being, he is that powerful.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And we like power.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: We care about power, everybody wants to access power.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Half a dozen years ago, there was something that a company in Australia called the Power Balance Company put out, called the Power Balance Bracelet.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Any of you remember these things?
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Silicone band with a little hologram, you could buy them for$30 or$40.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: By the way, you can buy them online this morning for a dollar apiece.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: I think you should hold out for$10 for a buck.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: But uh so they promised, and everybody, Robert De Niro, well-known golfers, Shaquille O'Neal, Bill Clinton, they all were wearing this because it accessed, it promised, the untapped power and the untapped balance in your body.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, great for athletes.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: You'd be more powerful if you wore this, and you would be, could be keep your balance better.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, it turned out that, of course, they got you know sued for false advertising by the government of Australia.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: They're out of business, they had to pay back all their money, and you can buy these uh, you know, you can buy these things for pretty cheap, right?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: So, but everybody really wants power, and if somebody tells you that there's some sort of superstition or that, you know, witches are gonna pray over it, and you can somehow have access to power, we're all in on that.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
5:35
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about power today, and we're saying that God has all the power.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: The other fact that I want to tell you is one that you've probably never heard before, because it's not even taught at seminary, and that is that El Shaddai was the number one name for God in Genesis.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: The number one name for God by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the number one name for God that was used in the thousands and thousands of years before Moses came along in about 1500 BC.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai was the name.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Now they knew about God's personal name, Yahweh, because it's mentioned sometimes in Genesis, but not in the way that God revealed it to Moses, because we read this in Exodus chapter 6.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Let me set the background for a minute.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: You remember that in Exodus chapter 3, two weeks ago we talked about this.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Moses was in the desert.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: He was watching over his father-in-law's flock.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: He saw this burning bush and turned aside to see it, and a voice came out of the bush.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: It was the voice of God saying, Take off your sandals, ground on which you were treading is holy.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And then God surprised Abraham or Moses by saying, I've been hearing the cry of my people down in Egypt, the same Egypt that you left.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Remember, you were raised in the palace down there by Pharaoh's daughter after she plucked you out of the Nile.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And then you ran away because you killed somebody.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And so you've been hoping to just sort of hide out for the rest of your life.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm going to send you down there and deliver my people who are crying out to me.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, Hold it, hold it, hold it.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: I need a special weapon.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: I need something.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: I can't go down there.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm a nobody.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'll give you my personal name.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 3, God said, I am that I am, and then a couple verses later said, I am Yahweh.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's the name we studied three weeks ago.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: One, two, something like that, two weeks ago.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's the name that means I am here to help you.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: I am, I am the one you should love because I am your, you know, so forth.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: So now God says, so here's the deal.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: So Moses goes down there and he takes his staff, which he can turn into a snake by God's help, and he goes down and he tells the Israelites who are slaves down in Egypt, he says, I'm back and I'm going to set you free.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And they go, Yay! And so he goes to Pharaoh and he says, Pharaoh, God's given me his real name.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: You guys have thousands of these dorky gods, these beetles and all this stuff, but I know God's real name.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: His name is Yahweh.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me, Pharaoh, Yahweh.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: So, and and Pharaoh listens to this, and Yahweh says, Let my people go.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: And Pharaoh says, Yeah, right.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Says, I have, quote, Exodus chapter 5.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: He says, I have never heard of this, Yahweh.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't know Yahweh.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna let, I'm not gonna listen to you talk about Yahweh.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm so disgusted at you wasting my time.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make life really bad for all your countrymen.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take away the straw with which uh they I've been giving them the straw so they can make all of these bricks to build my the cities here, Python and Ramses.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take away the straw, but they have to, they have to uh make as many bricks, even without straw.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: So that happens.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Israelites freak out, they go to Moses a couple verses before this, they say, Moses, you're killing us.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna die now.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: This is just ridiculous.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: They're beating us, and we can't make these bricks.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: So Moses goes back to God, and Moses lets God have it.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 5, 22 and following, Moses says, God, you have let me down.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: The whole Yahweh thing isn't working.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: You know?
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the fact I can throw my staff down and it turns into a snake.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: God, have you seen the movie Prince of Egypt?
9:23
SPEAKER_00: They can do the same thing.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, anyway, he just says, This is not working out.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: You've blown it.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: I want out of here.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: The whole lane thing doesn't work.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And here's what God says back to him: God spoke to Moses.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: I am Yahweh.
9:39
unknown: Okay.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: That's my personal name, so forth.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Right?
9:48
SPEAKER_00: That's the name I used with them.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: But I was not known to them by my name Yahweh.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: What's he saying?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Why is this an encouragement to Moses?
9:56
SPEAKER_00: And why does the next sentence, so again he says, I'm promising, relax, I'm promising you, Pharaoh will let you go.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's what he's saying.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me carefully.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, listen, in the old days in elementary school, I gave them my elementary school name, El Shaddai, and that's really enough for them.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: That's the name by which I promised them all of these things.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: I promised them descendants, I promised them a land, I promised them everything.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: I gave them these great promises.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai was all they need.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai was what I gave them.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Now we're in, you know, deep trouble.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: They're down there and they're crying and so forth.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: And so to get you out of the desert, I gave you the high school name.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: I moved up and I gave you the name Yahweh.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh's a greater name than El Shaddai.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: You put those two names together, though, Shazam.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Yahweh, I'm here to help.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai, I'm all powerful.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you both of those names.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: So quit whining.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: You know both of these names.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: You've now announced it to Israel and Pharaoh, but they don't get it like you do.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: I explained it to you.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: So just shut up and relax, it's all gonna work out.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: So that's what God is saying here.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Does that make any sense?
11:02
SPEAKER_00: All right, so you've never heard that before and you'll never hear it again.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: But that's sort of the logic that he's using.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai was the name in Genesis, and that's that's still, I'm gonna show you why that name is so cool.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: And even though it's the elementary school name of God, you still need to know it and use it in your prayers, okay?
11:22
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you now five super things the name El Shaddai gives us.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: Five.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, five.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Number three is the one you need to, if you're falling asleep, wake up at number three.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: That's the biggie.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: All right?
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Let me work up to it.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Number one, superpower.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Superpower.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Avengers, this is endgame, all that.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know if anybody else likes Marvel comics or superheroes.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: I grew up reading the, riding my bicycle down to Fred Meyer and reading all the comic books in the afternoon.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: And um, now Superman was my guy, but I mean now they there's all these other kinds of superheroes.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday morning I ran over and I got the grandkids from a couple of houses, and Melody and I made what'd we make?
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Pancakes.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: And then they go, let's watch a movie.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: It's Saturday morning.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: It's it's God's will.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: We watch a movie on Saturday morning.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, adios.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: So Saturday morning is movie watching time.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: So we picked uh what do we watch?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, the Incredibles.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: First, first Incredibles movie.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: So here's the interesting thing about the Incredibles movie is you know there's like there's a husband and wife and three kids, and they're all they call them supers.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: They just shortcut, they don't talk about them superpowers, they call them just superpowers all the way through it.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: They're supers, and I was listening to that, I was thinking, that's God.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: He's superpower, he's omnipotent, he's almighty.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Would someone close that door, please?
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So he's the superpower.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: God is number one, God can do anything he wants.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: How superpowerful is he?
12:54
SPEAKER_00: A.W.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Tozer answers that question.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Since God has at his command all the power in the universe, the Lord God omnipotent can do anything as easily as anything else.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: All his acts are done without effort.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: He expends no energy that must be replenished.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: How cool is that?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Just remarkable.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's how superpowerful God is.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Now I confess to you, when I think of God's superpower, I think of stuff that happens in nature that's gigantic.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: I think of volcanoes, I think of hurricanes, I think of, I think of lightning.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: I think of like when a volcano, I mean a hurricane, I mean a tornado and lightning happen at the same time.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: And those things are just mind-blowing to me.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And I go, hell should I?
13:48
SPEAKER_00: I go, man, he's so powerful.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: And when all of these things hit, and I remind myself that God is the God of the storm, and God is in charge of these.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm just filled with reverent awe of God.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And when I hear about a volcano blasting up, I think, wow, there's so much power there.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God is more powerful than a volcano.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: And then I look at the night sky and I read astronomy stuff, which I'm fond of.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: And I know that if you get in a perfectly, if you have 2020 vision, you're in a perfectly dark sky with no moon up here in the northern hemisphere, you can see over 4,000 stars.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: If you have binoculars, decent per binoculars, you can see up to 200,000 stars.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: If you go to one of those observatories, you can actually see a billion stars.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And yet, one of those observatories out there in wherever it is, Utah or whatever, focused on a pencil-size piece of sky.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: This is this this is a decade.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: They focused on just a pencil-sized piece of sky that was totally dark.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: They had nothing when they looked at it.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: A superpower telescope.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And they left it focusing on it for 15 days.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: And then when they came back and they looked at the picture at the end of the 15 days, all the light that had been accumulated, they found three in that tiny little spot of sky.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: They found 3,000, not stars, but galaxies.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Galaxies, each one with a minimum of a hundred billion stars.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Actually, that happened about 15 years ago.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And they've now just worked their way through all of those 3,000 galaxies, found that some of them have as many as a trillion stars, it appears, because of the red shift and so forth.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, is that amazing?
15:45
SPEAKER_00: I think that's astounding.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And yet, uh, even as you look at this, this you can see that there's far more darkness than there is.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Each of these stars, there's like one septillion stars, they say one with 24,000, 20, uh, 24 zeros after it.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it used to be thought, you remember when you were growing up, when I took astronomy out here at Washburn, we were told Milky Way galaxy was one of 100,000 galaxies, or 100 billion galaxies, and the Milky Way galaxy had 100 billion stars.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: But you know, the latest from astronomers this year is that the Milky Way galaxy we had to revise upwards, it has 400 billion stars.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And there are not 100 billion, but 170 billion galaxies we know of.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And a respondent to this announcement from one astronomy group, uh, well-known astronomers, said, why don't we just stop counting and just call it infinite?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Because it's continuing to grow and continuing to expand.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Now you and I know it's not infinite in a philosophical term, because each one is something that God individually created, but it's so mind-blowing, isn't it?
16:55
SPEAKER_00: There are now, they believe, more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on all the seas, all the seashores of the world.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: More stars.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And yet, by the way, the people in physics and and in, you know, people who look with telescopes, you know, look at small stuff, they point out that there's actually more complexity and more distance inside one grain of sand than the astronomers have found in all of outer space.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, just and you go, wow, I this is just astounding to me.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I think of when I think of that God is superpowerful, and then I think, well, the nice thing is, and this is a great transition between one and three.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's I'm getting to three.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Hold on till number three.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: But the transition is that this God of superpower has a super purpose.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: That is, he has a goal for everything.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: He's working everything after the counsel of his will, after his own desires or purposes.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but God does according to his will, whatever he wants in the host of heaven, that is the stars, and among the inhabitants of earth, and no one can ward off his hand or say to God, What have you done?
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:05
SPEAKER_00: God, you can't stop God, you can't thwart God, he has a purpose.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah says this, remember the prior things from long ago.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: I am God, and there's no other.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I am God.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: There's none like me who tells the end at the beginning, from ancient times things not yet done, saying, get this, here it comes.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: My plan will stand all that I decide I will do.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: God has a plan, he has a purpose, no one can thwart it because he's El Shaddai, because he's all powerful.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: Now get this.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: This is a surprise.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: This was a surprise to me.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking El Shaddai, like I wrote in the front of your bulletin, all powerful.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, you know, like Halloween, Frankenstein, things that are super powerful or super scary, right?
18:49
SPEAKER_00: They can crush us, they get mad at us, we're in deep trouble.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: And then I look at the verses of El Shaddai in Scripture, and I find out it's not super scary.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: According to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whenever they used the name El Shaddai, they thought of him with a sigh of thanksgiving and blessing.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Super promise.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: That this all-powerful God uses his El Shaddai power to guarantee that he'll fulfill his promises.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you the five.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai is used seven times in the Old Testament, both words.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: It's used another 40 times in the Old Testament without the El or God, just Shaddai.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Times it's used in Genesis in the beginning, it's used as El Shaddai, and in every case, I want you to notice there's nothing scary about it.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: When Abram was 99 years old, Yahweh appeared to him saying, I am El Shaddai.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: What's his next line gonna be?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna crush, I'm gonna send lightning, right?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: No.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Live in my presence and be blameless.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: I will set up my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you greatly.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: He's 99.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: He's they're about to head into the nursing home.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: They're so well past having a baby, it appears as though God's forgotten his promise to them 15 years ago that he would give them a son, and that son would have sons, and they would finally multiply, and they'd become like a million people and keep growing and become a nation, and there'd be kings and so forth, and they would exist until the end of the world, even though all other nations around them, though they were bigger and powerful, would collapse.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: But this nation, the nation that would come out of Abraham and Sarah, would last until the end of the world.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: All of this incredible promise, but it's like God's forgotten, you know, time has passed for us to have babies, and yet God comes back to Abram when he's 99 and says, I'm El Shaddai, it's gonna happen.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I promised it, it's gonna happen.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Next time it's used, El Shaddai in the Bible, Abraham's son, now the son that popped out of him and I and uh Sarah, Isaac, says to his son Jacob, May El Shaddai bless you, not tromp on you, not scare you to death, but may El Shaddai bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you so that you become an assembly of peoples.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Once again, blessing, fertility, promises of people in a land.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 35, the third time.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Elohim said to Jacob, I am El Shaddai.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: What's gonna come next?
21:28
SPEAKER_00: What's gonna come next?
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Be fruitful and multiply.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: A nation indeed, an assembly of nations will come from you, and kings will descend from you, and I'll give to you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: I made you promises, I made your father, I made your grandfather promises of millions of people of descendants, and of a promised land.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm El Shaddai, so powerful that I can make it happen.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 43 14, Jacob to his sons.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: His sons are returning to Egypt.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Where they've met with a guy they don't recognize as their brother Joseph.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Joseph's uh made them leave their younger brother Benjamin.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: He gave them some grain, but he kept Benjamin back, and so they're starving, so they have to return to Egypt to beg their brother for grain, and their brothers return.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: And Jacob says, May El Shaddai cause what?
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Cause judgment to fall on Egypt?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: No, may El Shaddai cause the man to be merciful to you.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: So it's again, it's about blessing and mercy.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: And the fifth and last time it appears in Genesis, Jacob dying, says to his son Joseph, El Shaddai appeared to me and blessed me, said to me, I'll make you fruitful and numerous, I'll make many nations come from you, and I'll give this land as a permanent possession to your future descendants.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you see it, this word El Shaddai, though it's like, wow, super powerful?
22:54
SPEAKER_00: He could take, you know, in Avengers Endgame, they have the final battle, and they have everybody but Superman himself flying around, and yet with one word of his mouth, God could just speak, and every single one of those other superheroes would just disintegrate into molecules.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: That would make for a bad movie.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, wouldn't be interesting.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: But it'd be fun for us.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: But that's that's the real power God has, because he's omnipotent, he's almighty, and yet you look at how how our patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thought of that.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: They thought, that means he can keep his promises.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: That means he can bless us.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: That means even if we're childless, he can give us a child.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And even though it seems impossible, he's gonna give us the promised land.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So let me contrast for you really quickly, Elohim, which we think of as power, and El Shaddai.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Elohim really always speaks about God's power in creation and in nature.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: But El Shaddai, we're now finding out finding out means God's power in promise and in comfort.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Because I promised it, he says, and because I'm powerful, I can keep it.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking at this, I'm thinking, you know, the big problem with promises.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: So promises, you know, when I give you a promise, you know when I said I do, I will, you know, to my wife, you said it to your wife, to your husband.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: You make these promises in life.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Those are godlike things, they're beautiful things, they're wonderful things, but the problem is they're really weak things.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: They depend on two things.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they depend on faithfulness, and when someone walks out of a marriage, we talk about infidelity, and faithfulness broke that marriage.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: But, and that's true, but you know what they also depend upon?
24:54
SPEAKER_00: They depend on ability.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, you know, you're just unable to fulfill your promises.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: You're not powerful enough.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: You say to someone, I'll meet you at nine o'clock there, and then and then just as you're getting in your car, you get an emergency phone call, or on the way you realize you're out of gas and you have to stop.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna be late, or maybe a cop pulls you over.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And you and you say to them, you know, I wanted to, I would have.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not a faithfulness issue, it's not a character issue, it's an ability issue, it's a power issue, right?
25:22
SPEAKER_00: You just didn't have the power to fulfill it.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And actually, of these two things that promises require to be strong, for they are weak and fragile things, power is the fundamental one.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to fulfill your promise in the first place, and then you need to be faithful to it.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And so the problem is that you and I can't fulfill.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: We're just not able to fulfill some of the things that we promise our children, our spouses, our grandchildren that we're gonna do.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: This last week, you were unable.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: You promised them, and you were unable.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: But the great thing about God, and by the way, I was looking at this, there's actually a website, sorryfor not keeping my promise dot com.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: It's really sad as you read people all over the place just send in their stories, and just dozens of them, you look at them, and and it's someone they can't really get to, apologize anymore.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: That person refuses to talk to them or has passed away or whatever else, and so they have these heart-rending, sorry, I couldn't keep my promise.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Here's a story of being unable to, just not having the power to keep that important promise.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: In other cases, they're apologizing for a lack of faithfulness, right?
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Now you get to the New Testament, this whole thing about promises, as you know, is so big in the Bible.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: And in the New Testament, we find God's greatest promise to us, and this is the promise that He made to us, says John in 1 John 2, eternal life.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the Lord Jesus came down to earth to make us a promise.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'll take your sins on myself, on the cross.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: If you will look at me hanging on the cross, if you'll say, You're right, God, I'm wrong.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: I can't be saved by myself.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm just coated with sins.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm apart from you.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: I need reconciliation.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: I fling myself with a kind of reckless abandon upon you and your grace.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: I trust your son as my Savior.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: Then God says, I promise you some remarkable, miraculous, supernatural things.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: I promise you the forgiveness of sins forever and ever, and I promise you eternal life and fellowship with me forever and ever.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: The problem with those promises is, are they just words?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they're just words.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: They require two things.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: They require someone powerful enough to fulfill them, and someone faithful enough to fulfill them.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And John, the same author, says in his gospel, quoting Jesus, Jesus says, We're powerful enough and faithful enough.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, I give them eternal life and they'll never perish.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about you, speaking about me, those who've trusted him as Savior.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: And he is more powerful than anyone else.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: No one can snatch them from the Father's hand.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: His hand, the Father's hand, the two hands come together over you and hold you firmly and tightly so that God can keep his promise.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: He can be El Shaddai and He guarantees you eternal life.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: Is that cool or what?
28:35
SPEAKER_00: That's why we say the future is as bright as the promises of God.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And the future is that bright because God is El Shaddai and has the power to guarantee these things.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: I like what Michael Yosef said.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: When our children see us clinging to the promises of God, they'll grow up trusting in his goodness.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is you tell them that God is powerful and God is faithful, because God is omnipotent and because God is faithful, he will keep his promise to take them home to heaven.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: So that's uh, I love that.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: That's number three, and that's the main one, and so I'm gonna zoom to the close here because I must be really honest with you.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Once you get out of Genesis, once you get to the most, the rest of the Old Testament pretty much just gives you Shaddai and doesn't include the L, and all of a sudden Shaddai begins to show two different faces.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: He continues to show a face of comfort and affection to his people, but now he begins to show a face of wrath and judgment to his enemies and to our enemies.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: And this is super destruction.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's why in the prophets, Shaddai is used oftentimes in association with what we call the great tribulation.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from, notice, Shaddai, it comes.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: Now Shaddai is not simply a blessing, a kind God, but this is dealing now with his enemies and yours.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: And when we come to Revelation, we find this same face day and night, the four living creatures never stop saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God, the Almighty, Shaddai, who was, who is, and who is to come.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: And the revelation ends from his mouth.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: As Christ returns, will come a sharp sword to smite the nations, he'll rule them with a rod of iron, he'll tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament would say, El Shaddai.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: So super destruction.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And on the other hand, for you and for me, not just in the Great Tribulation, but even now, when attacked by God's enemies, he gives us a super refuge.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's important to us because we are being attacked.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: Even, you know, the weather is a strange thing, you know, for about the last hundred years.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: There had only been 25 years or so that had a category five hurricane in the world, and now we have we've had one every year, I think, for the last four or five years.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: We had two this year, one that we know of well, Hurricane Dorian, which has uh, you know, pretty much destroyed a lot of the uh Bahamas.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And yet God says, you know what, I showed you when my son Jesus was at the Sea of Galilee, I still the storm and I calm the waves of the sea, and I will take care of you.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Or for instance, uh, when uh I don't know if you remember Jim Elliott was the name of a student at Wheaton College in 1949.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: As a student there, he wrote in his diary, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: And then he went off to be a missionary.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: He married his uh girlfriend at Wheaton, Elizabeth Elliott, and he went down with four friends to Ecuador and in January of 1956, or 50, I think it was 56, they got slaughtered, they got killed, they got speared to death after they landed five of them.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: You know the story, okay?
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And immediately Elizabeth was said, your husband was the leader of this group.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: He was a unique guy, he was an athlete, all this other stuff, who's so godly, would you write his biography?
32:24
SPEAKER_00: So she writes the biography, and then, to everyone's surprise, chooses as the title this phrase, which comes out of one place, this chapter, Psalm 91, verse 1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: She called it Shadow of the Almighty, and she was asked, uh, we don't get it.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he took his refuge in the shadow of Shaddai, but Shaddai allowed him to die.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And she said, need to read my book carefully.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: And she explains in there that she was taking the second half of his statement.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: What is it she said that he could not lose?
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Certainly not his life.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: We cannot keep our life.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: God does not promise that we'll live forever.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: God does not guarantee that if we pray to him, he will save us from cancer or he will keep us from dying of heart disease.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he promises, but God promises that we will never lose his promise of eternal life.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: We will never lose his love, that though we are sheep dying, every day we go forth to be slaughtered, says Paul in Romans 8.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Yet neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Shadow of the Almighty is where he's dwelling right now.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: So that's El Shaddai.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: All right?
34:07
SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai means he's super powerful, it also means he's super purposeful.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: And his purpose is primarily to be a super promiser who keeps his promises to us.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: How amazing.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: But a super destruction is coming.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, for God's people, the ones who are under attack, there's a super refuge.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: Keep those things in mind as we bow our heads in prayer and share the Lord's table.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for this promise.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you're this kind of a God, so powerful that you could send your son to die on the cross for us.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna break the bread and drink the cup today and watch him there and sit with him around the table and celebrate this.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: But then you could, because you're El Shaddai, you could raise him from the dead to fulfill your promise to us that he would bring us salvation, that he would bring eternal life and forgiveness of sins to everyone around the world who would ever trust in him as Savior.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Father, I ask that in this moment he would bless us as you promised to do, in your role as El Shaddai.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Beshim Yeshua, we pray.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Amen.