Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 20, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Olam

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October 20, 2019 | The Names Of God - El Olam · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that God has names more than one?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting today, we're in a series called The Names of God because God has given Himself a lot of names.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's some disagreement about how many.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say 12, some people say 20.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Arthur Clark, the fantasy writer, the science fiction writer, said 9 billion names, but we're going through a series that's fallen the names of God.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the name we're going to look at today is called El Olam.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: El Olam.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: El, as you know, means God.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Olam means everlasting.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: But let's review the names that we've done so far.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Say these with me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: The first name we did is Elohim, the creator God that we worship.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then came Adonai, the Lord and Master that we obey.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the personal name of God, Yahweh, the God who's here for us, used us more than all the other names combined, about 7,000 times in the Old Testament.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the favorite name of some of you still, El Roe.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Hagar.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The God who sees me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then we moved to El Shaddai.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is Amy Grant's name.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not really.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's name, but it's God Almighty.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: El Shaddai, say it with me.
• 1:23
  unknown: El Shaddai.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the name that all the patriarchs used, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, what a great name, Yahweh.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh will provide, the God of Providence.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the God of Psalm 23, the God who guides us, the God who takes care of us, and so forth.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So huge topic.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But today we move to a very, very interesting name, El Olam.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: This name, as soon as it mentions time, brings into play all kinds of things that we normally don't think about or read about, at least not after college, not after we take courses in physics and study the, you know, astronomy and the age of the universe and so forth, but that's what this name actually gets into, the God who is everlasting, Olam, whatever that means.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what I've done is I've looked through loads of verses on El Olam, and uh this is not going to be a theological message.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it may be a little confusing at times because that's just who I am.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I confuse people, but it's just as I studied these verses, these are the things I got out of it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and there's about ten.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember how many, but I'll put them up on the website and you can count them yourself.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that I learned about El Olam, and it's the most basic thing, is that he gave himself, when God gave himself the name El Olam, it was communicating that he is the one and only God, because there is no other God that is Olam.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is, who dates from before everlasting to everlasting, from the vanishing point in the past to the vanishing point in the future.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how he expressed it through the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, Isaiah.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: When he said, I am the first and I am the last, besides me, there is no God.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: John, the beloved disciple, picked up on this, and in Revelation 22 at the end of the Bible, he had Jesus saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, the New Testament language.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first and the last, the beginning and the end.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that as we enter this word today, and each word is, in a sense, a doorway into a picture of what God wants us to know that He is like, we enter into a doorway which is the only God doorway in the universe.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: None of the others qualify.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Second thing I want to say about this is really huge.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you begin talking about time, you begin thinking about permanence, you begin thinking about impermanence, about the things that pass away.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You think about death, you think about divorce, you think about the end of friendships, the end of marriages, the end of contracts.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: You think about how so much of the life we know is a life of things passing away.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the name that God takes for himself to communicate that he never passes away.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the greatest impermanence of all is the impermanence of life, and that is death.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as we approach October the 31st with the vampires and the whatever else, we're going to be teasing about this, but it's not a funny issue in the Bible.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Death is our great enemy.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: After all, there are two equal and opposite errors made in our society about death.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are other errors about death, but uh first is that death is a natural part of life.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the uh Lion King cycle of life thing, which became popular about 35, 40 years ago before the Lion King came out.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Billy Graham said in about 1950 that the grand suppression of the 19th century was sex, but the grand suppression of the 20th century, the thing that nobody talked about, not at any universe or anything, that everybody didn't want to talk about was death.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Billy Graham said.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: He said that in the 50s, but that changed because in about 1980, many of the universities, including Washburn across our country, started having courses in death.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And children's books got written about death.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in every case, those children's books were trying to sort of defuse the mystery and the fear of death, to say that death was just a normal part of the cycle of life, like animals dying and going back into the ground and new animals being born.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, shall we sing the song together from Lion King?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a guy know named Pete, he's not a Christian.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Pete had a nephew, aged three years old, who suddenly died.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pete has a seven-year-old daughter.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Seven-year-old daughter asked her parents, where is my cousin now?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, her parents were strong unbelievers in God and in heaven.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe in an afterlife at all.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: They believed that death was the end of things.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Daddy had seen these books, and he thought this might be a wise way to handle it, to sort of explain to her that this is a normal part of life.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what he did.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: He explained to her about bodies being born and dying and going down into the earth, and then and he said, That's where your cousin is.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's gone down into the earth, and next spring, when the beautiful flowers bloom, you know, then that will be your cousin.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he was shocked, though he shouldn't have been, when his daughter ran screaming from the room saying, But I don't want Johnny to be fertilizer.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's part of the problem with the whole natural idea that we know in our hearts.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the New York Times, writing a book review of one of these children's books, said, This is just horrible stuff.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of us adults know that death is not a natural part of life.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't feel this way.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We know it's an enemy, we know it's something, we it's a mystery, and we hate it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So why are we trying to convince our kids to just say it's nothing at all?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the mistakes that we make in our modern world is trying to pretend that death is natural.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: The other mistake says that no death is an enemy and it's a scary thing, but of course, these folks would say that death is final.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is the final period at the end of the sentence that there is absolutely nothing after death.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is popular, especially with on college campuses, at least mine, you know, uh, where everybody's pretty cynical, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the uh maybe the headliner of this, one of the greatest poems of the 20th century, was entitled, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Good Night referring to death.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's written by a fellow born in South Wales named Dylan Thomas, one of the most popular on college campuses in the middle of the last century, one of the most popular poets there was, because of his Welsh accent, and because he was always smoking and he was drinking whiskey when he would lecture and read his poems and so forth.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so the theme of this poem was that, you know, death is a bad thing, but out of dignity, we ought to just rail against it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: We ought not to accept it, go down into the grave and disappear forever, but at least go down, you know, raging against it.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dylan actually grew up in a home in South Wales where his mother was born again Christian, but his dad was this brilliant English professor, and who is an absolutely hated God, religion, and the church.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: But spent a lot of time with Dillon.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, as Dylan was growing up, before Dillon even went to elementary school, his dad taught him Shakespeare.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He taught him Macbeth.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Macbeth, as you know, famously talks about death this way: out, out, brief candle.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Life's but a walking shadow.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Dylan grew up sort of mixed up about religion, but closer to his dad's view of religion and death than his mom's view.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so when he came up with this poem when he was in his 30s, it just swept the continent and America.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: The poem goes like this.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is a brilliant poem.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a special kind of poem, won't talk about that, but I want to share with you this message in the poem, as well expressed as any message has ever been, that death is the final end.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do not go gentle into that good night.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Old age should burn and rave at close of day.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: You need to picture him with his glass of whiskey and with his cigarette in a college meeting room in front of collegians with his Welsh accent.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the kid's gone crazy.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then, by the way, what he does in the next five quatrains is he takes five well-respected people who are dying, and he tells these people that we would all respect, who are still dying and whose lives therefore are going to be meaningless.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them to fight against it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The first group of people, he says, wise men at their end.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he ends the four lines by saying, Don't go gentle into that good night.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Good men, if you're a good person, he says, This is your last wave by trying to do good.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you need to, as you die, rage against the dying of the light.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Group number three were people like himself.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: He became quite fat because he just drank a lot and so forth, and he dressed poorly, but he was super popular among college kids.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so he he would be a wild man who caught life and who sang, and he tells people like himself, as you're dying, don't go gentle into that good night.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Graven, that is, people who are sober, who are not silly, rage against the dying of the light.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the fifth group was his dad personally.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: His dad was dying now, his dad would die within the year, and he writes the last stanza of this poem to his dad.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you, my father, there on the sad height, etc., do not go gentle into that good night.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, his dad died, his dad the atheist, and within a year, Dylan himself would die.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It happened when he was over here in the States and he was making his tours of the college campuses, and every night after he would read his poems, uh the kids would offer to buy him drinks, and he'd go to the bar, and on this last night of his life, at age 39 in 1953, just as he was about to pass out and go into a week-long coma, he said, I think I've set a record, that's 18 whiskies in a row.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the only moment he woke up from his coma, realizing he was dying, he said, I'm 39 years old, and this is how it's going to end.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not quite a raging against the light, but this is a way that the world, I guarantee you, when you turn on the television set, most of the people who are behind the television set, the folks in Hollywood, folks making the movies, do not believe that there is a heaven or a hell or a life after this one.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them don't.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: They would take the cynical view and they might say, rage against the dying of the light.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is, when you open the Bible, we are told that, listen, every one of us knows in our gut that death is not the period at the end of the sentence, that it's not final.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Ecclesiastes, after, you know, um after giving Carrie Livgren the material for dust in the wind and talking about there's a time and a place for everything, ends by saying, God has made everything beautiful in its time.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's also set Olam, eternity, in the human heart.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of us down deep senses there's something more than just this life.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Paul picks up on that in 1 Corinthians, he says, God's gonna put all enemies under his feet, and the last enemy that will be abolished will be death.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: God's going to take care of it, he's gonna swallow up death and victory, and the Lord God will wipe away all tears from off all faces.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the second point I wanted to make here, it's a little bit of a long point, but this is the most significant thing about Alam is that time, El Olam, eternity, tramples upon death.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing I came up with is a little different, but I love this.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, it's that Elolam, the God of eternity, is so young.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, here's the problem.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you live forever, don't you just get older and older and older?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why we have the pictures of God having this super long white beard.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then we read in Isaiah chapter 40, don't you know?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't you heard?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is Elolam.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the everlasting God, it says in your translations.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is Elolam.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who's Elolam?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: The creator of the whole earth who never grows faint or weary.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't after existing for 10 million years.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless, and then the next couple verses are gonna be how he enables you to mount up with wings like eagles and run and not be weary, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Walk and not faint.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he is a young, he is an energetic God.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that reminds me of a quote, part of which I've shared with you before, and you love it, and you're gonna love this because this is the whole quote from G.K.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton from 120 years ago, all right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this it's a quote about how young God is.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because children have abounding vitality because they are in spirit, fierce and free, they want things repeated and unchanged.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: They always say, do it again.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: They do, don't they?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it drive you crazy?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've read that book, you have no voice left, do it again.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or push me once more, Ruben said to me the other day on the swing.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it was Jenny, and you go, just fall off or something.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: They always say, do it again, and the grown-up person does it again until he's nearly dead, right?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible that God says each morning, do it again to the sun, and every evening, do it again to the moon.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never got tired of making them.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, ready for the explanation?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here it comes.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old, and our father is younger than we.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Say, wow.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: He is so young, and he is young forever, and that's so important.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you will remember the Greek mythology, the Greek myth story, the tragic love story of Aurora and Tothonis.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Aurora was one of these demigods.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't at the top echelon of the gods, but she was still a god.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: She was still immortal.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: She fell in love with a human, a good-looking human named Tothonus.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Zeus felt compassion because they were such lovers, and so on.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he asked, What can I do for you?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I would like you to give Tithonis the gift of immortality.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Done, Zeus said.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he knew that she was forgetting something very important, that just living forever is no blessing but a curse, unless you are blessed at the same time with eternal youth.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so in that story, Thatonis lives and lives, and then he gets older and older, and finally his body starts crumbling away, and Aurora would do, she would love to be able to give him the gift of death, but he just keeps living on and on.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the wonderful thing about our God is Al Alam will make us forever young.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that cool?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't you excited about that, Greg?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about that.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you imagine, guys?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be able to remember each other's names, you know?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I might be able to touch the rim again.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm so pumped about this.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's not just gonna give us the gift of immortality, but Elolam, the God, everlasting God, who remains everlastingly young himself, will, unlike the eternally aging Tonus, allow us to be eternally young.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you say amen to that?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that gonna be awesome?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Elolam's promises are so, so, so, so certain.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get this, and I have to, I had to put this down because the first time a word is mentioned, especially an important word, especially an important name like El Olam, the first time it's used in the Bible is always significant.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Always specially significant.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: It always sort of governs all the rest of the times.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one of the rules we've learned, we, you know, smarter people than we have learned in the Bible.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the first time El Olam is used is in Genesis chapter 21.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And just to backtrack a little bit, you'll remember that Abraham has come from Babylon area, and now he's traveled all, he came to the promised land, he's obeyed God, and God says, I have two great promises for you.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Promise number one, a son, descendants.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have millions of descendants.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna, you know, and a king will come from them, the Messiah, and it'll last forever.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: The other promise is land.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna promise you a promised land that you're gonna own forever and ever.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus is coming back to Jerusalem.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can't go with me next year, that's fine.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: You'll get there.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the promises are a son, descendants, and land.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now the son just came in the last chapter, Isaac, okay?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: But Abraham's still traveling around.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's been bopping around promised land without owning any property at all.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: He first came to Shekim and then he moved up to Hebron and up somewhere else, and now he's in Beersheba for the last 10 or 12 years, and he's built a well there.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he and the other main chieftain in southern what we call Israel are fighting over the wells.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Their shepherds always fighting over the wells.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in Genesis 21, they signed this contract, they signed this covenant in the eyes of God, before the eyes of God, this con that says that Abraham, you're gonna get this land right here in perpetuity, forever.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Abraham is so happy that he says, it says, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's significant.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tamarisk is a tree that requires some water.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're down in the desert, been to Bersheba, you know, how can anything grow?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: A tamarisk tree requires water, but he plants it close to this well that they've dug.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's an evergreen tree.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: He plants that as if to say, I believe, I believe, by faith, I believe God's promise that I'm gonna be able to stay in this land and so will my descendants, that I'm gonna have this land, and he worshiped there in the name of Yahweh El Olam, in the name of the Lord God everlasting, your text says.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the point here is that God's promises to us will come true.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: They are so certain we can count on them.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: What promise has he made to you?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hasn't made you a promise of a subject?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or the land, he's made a greater promise, however, of the Son, Jesus Christ, a land called heaven, eternal life, so that even if you are one day tied to a stake and burned, you can say what the old martyrs, Christian martyrs, used to say: you take from me a life I cannot keep and bestow on me a life I cannot lose.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't you lose it?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because God will not pass from this scene.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna last forever, therefore, he can guarantee that his promises to us will come true.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: El Alam's promises are so certain.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Next point.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: This will be quick.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: El Alam keeps us so safe.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: You say, no, he doesn't.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's got the diagnosis of cancer.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: My loved one just passed away.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But no, God says, I'm telling you, I'm protecting you.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am your shepherd.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: You shall not lack for anything.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he says in Psalm 23, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take you through the through the through the fields of righteousness for my namesake, yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, don't need to fear, because I'm going to be with you.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in this wonderful verse, Deuteronomy 33, he says it bluntly and clearly.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've got your back because my arms are underneath you.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Say this verse with me.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: You should know it by heart, so read it out loud with me.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everlasting is Olam.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a beautiful passage?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: That means no matter how old or how young you are, God sees you as his little child, and his arms are underneath you to protect you.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: A guy years ago, a hundred years ago named Elisha, read this verse and wrote a song based on it, which some of you know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You ever heard what a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Leaning, leaning, safe and secure.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: There it is, safe and secure from all alarms, leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: What have I to dread?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: What am I to fear leaning on the everlasting arms?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So El Olam, because of his arms, keeps us safe.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another point.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: El Olam prepares such a future for us.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Psalm 90 is a really interesting Psalm.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's the oldest Psalm on the Psalter out of 150 Psalms.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only one written by Moses.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Moses wrote this 400 years before the earliest of the other Psalms, half of which were written by David.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, you remember, was sort of the savior of Israel who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and he brought them out to the southern edge of the promised land.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they send in, send in 12 spies.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ten came back and said, Scary, don't go.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Two, two, Caleb and Joshua, said, Yeah, we can do it with God's help.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But they got outvoted, and God in his anger said, You know what?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: The two million of you that voted, you don't get to go into the land.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't want the land.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're begging to go back to Egypt.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to take you through the desert for 40 years until you all die off.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let Caleb, Joshua, and Moses outlast you, but those are the only three.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take the new generation into the land.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the result of that was with all of those people dying, you figure it out, simple arithmetic, it's about 87, 88 people dying every single day.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of funerals.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Moses writes a psalm about El Olam, the everlasting God, but it's a psalm about death.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he begins it this way: He says, Lord, you've been our dwelling place throughout all generations, before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: From Olam to Olam, you are El.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Elohim, actually.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So his point is, as he goes on, but everything around us is dying.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that remains?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he himself has said, what's going to outlast the universe right here?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a home, a dwelling place.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think most people believe that in our world?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, but not the elites, not our professors.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very popular poster.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing lasts forever.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Forever is a lie.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: All we have is what's in between hello and goodbye.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is the response of cynicism that says there's nothing past this life or nothing forever or eternal.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just our relationship.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe these are people reading the magazines, because every year you find articles like this, this one dates from January this year, Discover magazine, asking, how will the universe end?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers theorize on whether the cosmos will end in fire, ice, or something else.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I did not believe in God or the Bible or a life after this one, if I believed that the universe was 13.8 billion years old, that it began with an infinitesimal particle, infinitely dense, infinitely heavy, that all of a sudden, this invisible, infinitely dense, infinitely heavy particle suddenly exploded in a big bang and sent all the pieces that have been flying away from each other in every direction at warp speed and are still flying away from each other, as science shows us through the red shift, at greater and greater speeds, and in fact, out of the 170 billion galaxies, according to science, that the ones that are the farthest away are moving at the most rapid speed, then I would wonder, too, how is the universe going to end one day if I left God out of it and didn't have someone in charge of the universe?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now the main three views that this and other articles give us are the big freeze, the big rip, or the big crunch.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And really simply, I can just tell you the big freeze is the idea that all of us galaxies are moving so fast and so far away that in, who knows, about 20, 22 billion years, we won't even be able to see the lights from other stars and galaxies, and as a result, it'll be dark and cold, and eventually the universe will just freeze up.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second view here, the big rip, is that everything's traveling faster and faster and faster, and eventually, even though friction is really small in our universe, we're gonna go so fast the friction will really become bad and it'll cause everything to just rip apart and disintegrate.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when everything will end.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everything.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Third, the big crunch is the idea that the universe expanding is sort of like a rubber band, and then eventually it'll have to come back.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one day it'll turn around and start rushing back toward the toward the center again, and it'll keep going and not stop, and it'll end up back at that initial dot.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's called the big crunch.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in any way, you look at it, it's going to end.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, the big crunch is about a hundred and trillion, a hundred trillion years, so you and I probably won't be around for that.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: So but so anyway, but here that isn't this interesting.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So again, we have the cynicism.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about you and me dying and the end of us individually.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the end of everything.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Friend of mine, Dave Corley, who's actually at the booth over in the cab building.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Dave, uh, running things, uh, chatted with me during the series about Arthur Clark.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a fantasy and science fiction lover, so is he, and he was sharing with me the Nine Billion Names of God, a famous book by Arthur Clark.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's got an interesting plot, but the interesting plot ends with the universe ending because the plot is basically quickly that over in Tibet there's a monastery where monks have been copying down all the combinations of letters, up to nine letters long for some reason, all the combinations of letters possible and putting them into books for 300 years, under the idea that eventually, after they get all these combinations down, the nine billion, don't know why they came up with that, but the llama did, the nine billion names of God will be in these books.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, everything will end.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a guy, according to this story, goes over, I think, from London, and he's got a computer.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a hot computer called a Mark V computer, which would be the slowest computer you and I have ever heard of nowadays.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lama's really happy we can get done with this if we plug this into the computer that can do all this really quickly.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so he and his friend are, you know, pumped and they're walking around and so forth.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're out one night riding a horse, and and they're talking about the lama has said that, you know, he thinks that the universe will just twinkle out of existence.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: It'll just be gone when the nine billionth name is written.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't really believe it, but all of a sudden his friend looks up, and the last line in the book is that they look up and all the stars are twinkling out into darkness.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was so blessed by that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't you blessed?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: But no.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, but see, that was science, science fiction's brilliant.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: It takes brilliant, it's a brilliant way of taking what we know of physics or what we think of physics and turning it into stories, but then you turn to the Bible, and the Bible is so different.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not sad and cynical at all, and there's somebody who's created the universe, who's outside the universe, and that's named God, and he has prepared for us what a future he's prepared for us.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac Watts, reading the same psalm that began this point, Psalm 90, wrote, Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, get ready for it, and our eternal home, our dwelling place.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really cool to think that in the future, our eternal future will be like going home.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because I like going home.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love going home to daddy and mommy's home where the fireplace was burning and the Thanksgiving meal and the turkey and everything.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember how wonderful that was?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that great?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: And as versus when I was a child lying in my bed at night, and maybe you like I trusted Christ when you were young, but you did not want heaven to come because you pictured it as these clouds and this and having to hang around a bunch of strangers forever and bad music and stuff like that.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: But no, the future is that we are actually going home.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what El Olam tells us.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the final point I want to make is our values, sadly, are so they're so not El Olam.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're so visible.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Paul puts it this way.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: He says this versus so many other people, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, cars, houses, bank accounts, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: What are your values?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: What are your eyes fixed on?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do you care most about?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Our values in this world, even among Christians, are so, so visible, right?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were young and they used to sing that old chorus with eternity's values in view, dear Lord, with eternity's values in view?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the best way to end this episode about God's name, El Olam, the God everlasting, is by saying, let's live with El Olam's values in view.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And those values are not visible, they are invisible.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and then let's sing about it.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for being a God who is permanent in an age of impermanence and an age of death and divorce, and friendships breaking up, relationships falling apart, contracts being broken, people dying.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think this morning of two beloved people in our fellowship who've passed away into your wonderful home in the past few days.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Joanne Weibel last night.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Great grandmother of a couple of my grandchildren, loved you, and at age 90 is happy to be going home.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think of Nancy Lutz.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you that your name, the name L.O.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lam, is the name that guarantees the promise of eternal life for both Nancy and Joan.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And guarantees it for all of us who trust you and cling to your robe because we are so heavy laden with our sins.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing that we can bring to you.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in response, you give us forgiveness and eternal life, and you give us yourself forever and say, Come home to me.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.