Well, we look especially in verse one, when the Lord appeared to Abraham and said unto him, I am the almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect. Abraham is known as the father of the faithful. In Hebrews 11, he is commended for trusting in God's promises. But when we consider Abraham's faith, we should not put it in isolation from God's help. If you've read the story of Abraham, you know, while yes, Abraham is faithful and a pattern for us all, but he needed God's help, God to strengthen his faith. And this episode really is a time when God renews his covenant promises and strengthens the faith of Abraham. It is important here to know the age of Abraham. In verse 1 it says when Abraham was 99 years old. This is important. 24 years previously when he was 75, God called Abraham out of the land of Ur and he gave him a promise that God would be a God to him and Abraham would be his people and through Abraham would be a seed, the seed of the promise of Christ and the seed of God's people in Israel. Well, later on, when he's 86, the seed has still not come. Sarah, his wife, still does not have a child. And Sarah, yes, she is faithful and she trusts in God, but she tries to fulfill God's promises with her own wisdom. And she says, since I do not have a child, Abraham, why don't you go into Hagar and have a child through her? Now, that was the wrong way. God's covenancy was to go through Sarah, not Hagar. But when Abraham was 86, he consented to his wife's instructions and we have Ishmael. Then 13 years later, now he is 99 years old, the Lord appears to Abraham. And the Lord is going to renew his covenant promise. He's going to strengthen Abraham's faith and say, Abraham, trust me. I said you will have a child. You will have a child. It may have been 24 years after the promise, but don't doubt. Don't waver. I will strengthen your faith. I will keep my promise. And this is a lesson for us all who are Christians. If we're Christians we have faith in God and by his grace we are faithful. But there are times when our faith is not as strong as it ought to be. And God is so merciful. He comes to us and strengthens our faith. And this morning we had the strengthening ordinance of the Lord's Supper. where Christians may have a different spectrum of the strength of their faith going into the sacrament, but as we all sit at the Lord's table and partake of Christ and Him crucified, He comes in His grace and He strengthens us. And I want to look, how do we respond to such grace and such strength? Well, let us first consider the covenant God. the covenant God. God comes and he appeals to Abraham and he reveals himself in a way that's given through the name. He says, I am the almighty God. In the Bible, names are important. We tend to just name our children a name we like, the sound of it maybe, or even just family heritage. But the meaning of the name in the Bible is important. It reveals the character of the person. A classic example is when David is going to a land, a home, inhabited by Abigail and Nabal, 1 Samuel 25. And David sends his troops, but the husband acts in a very, very foolish way. And Abigail comes and saves her husband's life. And it says in 1 Samuel 25, 25, Abigail was speaking, it says, his name is Nabal. For as is his name, so is he. Nabal is his name, and follies with him. So Nabal in Hebrew means foolishness. And how did he act? Foolishly. We think of Solomon. Solomon's name is giver of peace. And when you look at Solomon's kingdom, the picture is peace, rest from enemies. Eve, mother of the living. And God takes the same thing and he reveals who he is by name. He says, my name is I Am, Jehovah. That means the self-existing one, the one who is, the one who keeps his promises. So we look to Jehovah and we say, who is God? He is a God who keeps his promises. He says, my name is Jehovah Shalom. which means the Lord is peace. My name is Jehovah Sidkenu. The Lord is our righteousness. Well, here we have another name of God. When it says Almighty God, it's the Hebrews, some of us may have heard this, El Shaddai, El Shaddai. And God is saying, I am revealing to you, Abraham, who I am to strengthen your faith. I am El Shaddai. Now this name is used 48 times in the Old Testament, 31 of which actually are in Job. And there's centuries of debate how to translate it. But there is somewhat an agreement in what it means. Some people say the root means one who is able and willing to nourish and supply. The picture is someone who has all power, is able to overcome all things, has infinite resources, and will abundantly supply. See how we can't just translate it in one word to give all that? But the power, the ability, the capacity is how often it's been translated. When the Jews were translating the Hebrew to the Greek, they translated El Shaddai as all-powerful. The Latin Vulgate, it translated El Shaddai as omnipotent. Us, in our English translation, we get the same consistent theme. El Shaddai is Almighty God. And the Jewish rabbis, they translate it in a way that's consistent also. They said it means one who is enough. The all-sufficient God. And they used a phrase to describe El Shaddai, the mountain of God, unshakable, established, always there. All these pictures come to the meaning here of El Shaddai. Abraham, don't doubt. Child. Do not waver in your faith. I am El Shaddai. I have all power, infinite resources, and I will use these resources to nourish and supply every blessing for you. Take heart, have faith in me, El Shaddai. And when you look at the Bible, how this name is used, it's consistent. People need something, a blessing, a fulfillment of covenant promises. And God comes to his people and says, I am El Shaddai. I will use all my power and resources to supply your every need. For example, in Genesis 35, where there is a promise. And God comes and says, I am God Almighty, El Shaddai. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee. Kings shall come out of thy loins. How do we know God will provide his promises? How do we know God will keep his promises? How do we know God is able to keep his promises? I am El Shaddai. Then in Genesis 49, 25, Jacob is blessing all his children and he comes to Joseph and he says, Joseph, you're going to be fruitful. Well, how do you know it's going to be fruitful? Anything can happen. This is life after all. He says, trust in God, else you die. He says, by the God of thy father, who shall help thee, and by El Shaddai, the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, and blessings of the breasts, and blessings of the womb. Saying, God is infinite in power and resources. He is promised and he is able to come and supply all your needs. And this is a wonderful promise for us who are Christians. Our faith is to be strengthened upon the promise of God. Who is your God, brother? Who is your God, sister? He is El Shaddai, the Omnipotent One, the One of infinite resources and He will provide for all your spiritual needs. He will keep His promises to you. And this is all fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the mediator through whom God comes to His people. And what have we received from Christ? everything John 1 16 of his fullness not partly not most of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace and the way the greek forms their It's this continual supply of grace. Grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. Because it's never going to be exhausted. You see Jesus Christ as God, as El Shaddai, infinite in resources. There will never come a day, there will never come a time, there will never come a circumstance, there will never come a situation in which there is not enough grace for you. But no matter what, Christ comes to you, child, and says, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. And Paul had the faith to know that Christ and God are El Shaddai. Philippians 4.19, with all faith in his heart he says, but my God shall supply all your need according to the riches and glory by Christ Jesus. This is your covenant God. That's who he is to you. This is the one you met with in the sacrament this morning. You came as a pilgrim, some of us weary pilgrim, feeling our weaknesses, very much the mind on our inadequacies. And who did we come to? El Shaddai. And El Shaddai is Christ in the flesh. He provided His grace, His strength, His infinite resources, and as you partook of the Lord's Supper by faith, He communicated His blessing to your very soul. How this truth should encourage the saint. A.W. Pink He writes upon this text and encourages us to be full of faith and to be strong in the Lord. He says, it is because our God and Father is the Almighty that he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. It is because our God and Father is the Almighty that he is able to succour them that are tempted. It is because our God and Father is the Almighty, that nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is because our Saviour is Almighty, that he shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself. It is because our God is the Almighty that he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. It is because our Lord is Almighty that he is able to keep us from failing and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. My dear brother and sister, this is who God is to you in Christ, El Shaddai Almighty. And when God comes and renews his covenant and reveals his name to Abraham, he's saying, Abraham, you have all resources. You have everything. Now, I want you, Abraham, to respond to this grace in such a way that's pleasing to me. How is Abraham therefore to respond? Walk before me and be thou perfect. This is how Abraham should respond. This is how every Christian should respond. We are to walk before him and be thou perfect. To walk simply means one's life and conduct. How you live your life. Before me simply means the presence of God. Literally it's before my face, in my sight. We are to live our lives in the presence of God. Now for the unbeliever, they do not want that. Because the things that the unbeliever enjoys to do are things that are contrary to God. Unbelievers are unrepentant toward their sin. They enjoy their sin. They don't want a holy eye looking over them as they indulge in their sin. Unbelievers before the eye of God must tremble. Because God hates all workers of iniquity. Except one is perfectly righteous in his sight, the wrath of God abides on him. But those who are believers are very different. We enjoy being in the presence of God. Because the things in our renewed hearts that we like to do now are things pleasing to God. And we have no slavish fear in the presence of God because we're justified in His sight by faith. We do confess we are sinners. And when we do sin, we hate and we do repent from our sins. But we know the guilt and the punishment of our sin is not upon us. It has been imputed, transferred to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that with Christ's righteousness on our account, we stand in the sight of God righteous. And more than that, yes brother, yes sister, more than that, we stand in the sight of God as his dear children. And when we think of God's presence and living in the God's presence, we think of tenderness, protection, love. And therefore Christians who know El Shaddai by faith in Christ, we enjoy and desire to live before Him. And so we as Christians desire to live our whole lives in the presence of God. But here's the difficulty. We need to learn to do it. Now, everyone who's a believer in Jesus Christ believes in the omnipresence of God. We believe that God is everywhere, at all times, at once. Every believer believes that. If I was to query you after the service, do you believe God is only located at one place, or is God only present? And you would say God is only present. And you might quote to me Psalm 139, where the psalmist says, where shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. And we confess that theologically, but it's a different thing to live in the light of it. How often have we said things to people we know we shouldn't have said? And in our minds as we said such things, if we truly had a conscious perception of the omnipresence of God, we wouldn't have dared to say what we said. How often there's been a situation or circumstance and it happened a certain way and you responded in a way you know you shouldn't have responded. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was with impatience. And you look back and you regret it. But as you did that, you were not conscious of the presence of God. And you know if you truly had the conscious feeling that God is with you, you would have reacted very differently indeed. And I know that for myself. There's times when I've said or done things or acted in a certain way and I was thinking, what a fool. And if only if I thought God is always present, he knows everything, then I would have a tongue that would be more slow to speak and ears just a wee bit more quick to listen. But we as Christians, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, as we progress, need to learn to truly believe what we confess. God is everywhere and we should live our lives in his presence. Matthew Henry says, this is how we are to understand walking in the presence of God. He says, to be religious is to walk before God in our integrity. It is to set God always before us, to think, speak, and act in everything as those that are always under his eye. It is to have a constant regard to his word as our rule and to his glory as our end in all our actions. To be continually in his fear. It is to be inward with him in all the duties of religious worship, for in them particularly we walk before God. To be entire for him in all holy conversation, I know no religion but this sincerity. Now that's a high, high ask, I get you, yeah, I agree. But nevertheless, we should desire and long to live our entire lives in the presence of God. To do that, We need to have every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10, 5, every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That takes time. It takes experience. It takes falling and getting back up and learning from one's experience. But nevertheless, We are to seek with all our mind to have every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. So that we in our hearts seek to conform absolutely everything in our lives to that which is pleasing before God. He is everywhere. He knows everything. He sees everything. And we who are children do it out of love, who seek to please Him, and therefore we learn in our lives to do everything in the presence of God consciously. We need to learn to take God everywhere with us. When we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night, God is with us. When we walk and when we work, God is with us. We take God to us when we're shopping, when we're choosing our entertainments, what we eat and drink, how much we eat and drink, how we respond and communicate to people. We are to learn to have no such thing as a secular life. Everything is done in the presence of God. What is your job? How you conduct your job? How you interact with the people in your job? We need to fear God, dread anything that would offend Him, and have a heart so full of love, we long that everything in our lives would conform to His pleasure. Because when we do this, our lives will be transformed. That time when you're going to be quick with the tongue to rebuke someone, you'll stop. God's with me. What is the best way I can say this? What is the best pone? Should I just refrain now and wait till another time and gently and quietly speak to the person? Or respond? How do you respond to someone? You're just quick with the emotion or God is here. What is pleasing? What do I watch on TV? What movies do I see? What music do I listen to? What places do I go to? All in the presence of God. And this walking before God is not merely patterning our lives, there's something intimate and dear, fellowship. We're to live our lives before the presence of God, the special presence of God, the word, the prayer, the worship, the praise. And it's an amazing thing that we're able to do that. I think of my sin. And I think of His holiness, yet in the blood of Christ, I have full access. And the Bible does not say, I'm to come before God in a timid spirit. I read no such verse. I read time and again, boldness. I read time and again, confidence. What is this boldness? What is this confidence? Nothing to do with me. It's Christ. Because Christ's sacrifice is so efficacious and pleasing in the sight of God, for God to not accept and delight in my presence means he would have to find something of fault in the sacrifice and person of his Son, and he will never. And because his sacrifice is so pleasing, the Bible says, Hebrews 10, that I am to come with boldness and confidence into his presence. And that fills me with joy when I pray. When I open up the Word of God or when I'm preparing for the house of God in the public worship service, that gives me such delight to know that in Christ, our praise is pleasing. How is your walk with God, brother? How is your walk with the Lord, sister? Right now, You know, it's gonna be different. Some of us, it's gonna be really well. It's going really well right now, I'm so thankful. Some of us, you know, it's going quite good. Some of us, it's going okay. Could be better, could be worse. Some of us, to be honest, I'm not really walking with the Lord. There's different stages and seasons in the Christian life. Here's the encouragement, El Shaddai. God Almighty. If you were at this table this morning, you could be the weakest, weariest Christian on this planet. But Christ met with you and said, you're mine. This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you. I love you. I gave myself for you. Here's my person. Here's my strength. And if you're not walking but you're faltering, He gives you the strength to get back up and walk. Start reading your Bible again. Think of the glories that's been given to you. If you want a place to start, read John. We say, unconverted people, where should they start? John. If you're converted, go to John. If you don't really have a Bible plan right now, you're just skipping about, read John. And as you read John, think one, who is Jesus Christ? And two, what has he done for me? Two questions. Read all of John and you'll be blessed. But some of us maybe aren't faltering, we're, you know, in humility, the Lord's with us right now. Be encouraged, be strengthened, and continue in our walk. But here it's not simply to walk before God, God comes and says to Abraham, be thou perfect. And here's the danger in putting our theology in the Bible where it's not true. This is how you do theology. You read the text and then you get your theology. You don't have your theology and read it into the text. Be thou perfect. This is the expectation of Abraham. And if Abraham is not perfect before the Lord, he will prove to be, he is not the Lord's. Now we who are in this congregation, we understand what this word perfect means because we've looked at this numerous times. In the Bible, whenever it says perfect, it doesn't mean our version of perfect. Our version of perfect means perfection. Everything is complete. There's not a spot, not a blemish. That's not how the Bible uses the word perfect. No Christian, in our sense, can ever be perfect. That's why we need Christ and his salvation. But this word, and elsewhere, when it says perfect, does not mean how we mean perfect. The word perfect in the Bible means complete, whole, upright, undivided, sincere. It speaks of someone who's not a hypocrite like the Pharisees. Who says they're a Christian in worship and lives like a devil the rest of the week. Like a clear hypocrite. It speaks of someone who's not trying to truly serve God and serve something else. It's someone who is truly desiring to follow God. in a genuine way. Not in a perfection way, though of course we would like to be that, but in a sincere way. That's what the word perfect means. And when you read your Bible and you look at all the words perfect and study it, that's exactly it. For example, In 1 Kings 8-61, perfect means to follow God and to sincerely desire to keep his commandments. 1 Kings 11-4, perfect means to serve God and not worship idols. In 1 Chronicles 28 verse 9, perfect means to seek God, follow him, and not forsake him, deny him, apostatize from him. And to prove it doesn't mean sinlessness, think of David. Was David sinless? We who know our Bibles know he was not, he had many, many sins in his life, grievous sins, and yet the Bible says he was perfect. 1 Kings 15.3, comparing a king who was sinful and was not perfect. compares him to David who is perfect. His heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as the heart of David his father. See, David sinned. But I'll tell you what about David. He sincerely desired God. He did. He desired God's presence. He desired to pray to God. He desired to follow God's commandments. He did it with a sincerity. That's not to say there were times of sin. That's not times of sin when he was failing. That's not to say there were times he could have done better. But nevertheless, he was sincere, genuine, and upright in his desire for God. Therefore, David is perfect before God. Another king, King Asa. Was King Asa perfect in terms of perfection, sinless, doing absolutely everything right? No, no. But yet God says he was perfect. 1 Kings 15, 14, he does this, he does this, he does this. These were all right in my sight, but the high places were not removed. He didn't do everything I said. Nevertheless, Asa's heart was perfect with the Lord all his days. Do we see now? It doesn't mean perfectionism, sinlessness. It means upright, genuine, sincere, seeking the Lord, following his ways. And so if Abraham's not perfect, he's not the Lord's. but He is to be perfect. And when you look at the Bible, the saints are perfect. Noah, perfect. Job, perfect. Jacob, perfect. Zacharias and Elizabeth, perfect. We who are Christians in the covenant of grace with the infinite resources of El Shaddai in us in the new birth, we are to be perfect. upright, sincere, undivided, seeking the Lord. Are you perfect, Christian? Are you living an upright life that seeks to live your life as God would have you? That you truly worship the God alone And you're not doing it in hypocrisy. Hypocrisy doesn't mean you're not the best that you could be. Hypocrisy means flagrant sin. It would be literally me standing in the pulpit saying, be holy, and I literally have sexual adultery. That's hypocrisy. Hypocrisy doesn't mean that you fail at times. Hypocrisy means out and out, two-faced, two lives. Us Christians, yes, we are perfect. But as the Christian life, we have indwelling sins. And one of the ways we become divided in our heart is idols. We need to learn to kill our idols. It's always amazed me the end of John in 1 John. It's like out of nowhere. Out of nowhere, this is what he says. And chapter five is not saying anything about idols. And then he says in the very last verse of 1 John 5.21, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Why does he say that? Because we as Christians are so prone to have idols. And when we live for our idols, that's when we have imperfect hearts, divided hearts. You can't serve God and mammon. You cannot serve Lord Jehovah and Baal. And in times in our lives, idols come in. And we need, by God's grace, to get ourselves to know our idols and take them all down. What idols are in your life keeping you away from the presence of God? What idols may be keeping you from the Word, from prayer, from holiness, from living an upright life? How do you get rid of your idols? We could say tear it down, but that's not the place to start. This is the place to start. You keep yourself from idols by Jude 121, keeping yourself in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. You keep yourself in the love of God. This means you remind yourself daily who you are in Christ. What he has done for you, what he gives you and why he does it, he loves you. You open up your Bible and you say, Christ reveal your love to me. I'm struggling right now. I'm unmotivated. My heart is divided among many things, but I know you are altogether lovely. And as you keep yourself in Christ, when you see idols in your life, and they welcome, when you compare the idol to Christ, you will see it is nothing. Absolutely nothing in comparison to Christ. Peace, rest, joy, contentment, happiness. The idol will promise you the world and all things and never ever deliver. But you know by experience as a Christian that in Christ there is peace that passes all knowledge. There is rest for your souls. There's joy inexpressible and full of glory. And there is love that is heavenly and divine. This is how Abraham was encouraged. 13 years. I don't know, I was gonna say something, I don't know. 13 years at least, he was not exactly living in the promise consistently. Then 13 years after the birth of Ishmael, the Lord appears to him and says, Abraham, my child, I am El Shaddai. I will keep my promise to you. Be patient, wait on me. I have infinite resources, it will happen. I will give you this grace, therefore you walk before me and be thou perfect. Just want to end there. Brother and sister, You met with El Shaddai this morning. Whatever your walk, whatever your heart is, seek the Lord. If he has been so abundant in giving to you everything, respond to him by being faithful. So examine your life. See what needs to be changed. but you don't do it in your own strength. You don't do it in your own resources. Look to God Almighty and He will abundantly supply in Christ everything to fulfil His blessing in you. Let us pray. O El Shaddai, what omnipotence, Resources, thou art sufficient. Bless every one of thy children. Strengthen, revive our faith and cause us to walk before thee and be perfect in thy sight. In the Savior's name.