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Well, the name that we're looking
at tonight is the name El Shaddai. El Shaddai. And this is another name for
God in our series that we're looking at on names of God. We've,
of course, talked about God revealing himself to us, wanting us to
know more about him. And isn't that the most important
thing to know about? God. We need to know more about
God, don't we? Of course, there's a song more
and more about Jesus and all these kind of things, wanting
to know God. God has revealed himself to us. In what ways? How has God made
himself obvious? Through creation. It's so obvious
we take it for granted. We look up at the stars at night
sometimes and we don't think about God. We just take these
things for granted and they are incredible, amazing things that
prove God's existence, the supreme God, the creator God, the true
God. God has revealed himself and made himself very obvious. He has also made himself very,
Knowable, how has he made himself knowable? Through his words. And one of the ways that through
his words he has revealed himself to us is through his names. We've
talked about El, the general name for gods. God is an El,
right? He is God, a god. But he is not
just a god, who is he? He is El Ohim. He is the God. He is not just
one of them. He is the top God. He is above
all other gods. And last Wednesday we saw that
he also is not just Elohim, he is a unique name. He is Yahweh
or something like that. Yahweh, Jehovah, and we talked
about how those sounds have developed phonetically over the years.
We don't exactly know what that name sounds like, but it's something
like that. And it tells us essentially that
God is self-sufficient. He needs nothing. He is everything
all at once. He is always present and is always
what you need. How many of you have needed Jehovah
God this last week? Anyone? Needed a God who is always
there and always everything that you need at any time? We need
him in that way all the time and he is there. He's telling
us that's who he is. Now tonight we're looking at
another name and that is the name El Shaddai. We see this mentioned to us in
Genesis chapter 17 and verse 1. And when Abram was 90 years
old, and nine, so 99 years old, the
Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the Almighty God,
that is, Shaddai El or El Shaddai, walk before me and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between
me and thee and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell
on his face and God talked with him. and God confirmed his covenant
to Abraham. The best evidence available,
though it's sparse, we really don't have a lot of archaeological
or historical evidence that gives us a very clear, explicit description
of this name, El Shaddai, the Shaddai word, but it's used in
the Old Testament scriptures some 48 times. And from the best
that we can tell, it means something like God Almighty, God is like
a mountain. God is like a mountain that towers
far above impossible, imposing things. How many of you have
ever viewed a large mountain for real? Let's see here, let
me click a slide here for you. What is that mountain? It is
not Denali. It is not McKinley. It is the
largest mountain in the world. It is not Himalaya. That's a
range. It's Everest. It is the largest
mountain in the world. So let's think about this mountain
for a minute. If we're thinking about God as a mountain, let's
just try to get this in perspective. I like visuals. I have personally
hiked Mount St. Helens. I've driven up to a certain
point and then I've hiked the rest of the way, several hours,
up to the summit. The summit of St. Helens is unique. Do you know what the unique aspect
of the St. Helens mountaintop is? It doesn't have one. The top
is gone. It's missing. It was blown up.
At the Mount St. Helens, that mountain, it was
a very, very large mountain. At this present time, it stands
1.6 miles above sea level to its peak. That's a pretty high
amount. That's Mount St. Helens. That's
in the state of Washington. I've hiked that mountain up to
the edge and you walk all the way to the top and you stop and
you realize this mountain blew out its top and its side. And
there's this huge hole in the middle of this thing. I'll come
back to that in just a minute. I've seen that mountain. It's
very big. I've seen Mount Hood close up in Oregon. This is all
while I was an intern in Bible College my sophomore summer.
You get to do some pretty neat things in Bible College as a
pastoral intern. I climbed St. Helens. I saw St.
Hood. St. Hood is 2.1 miles high. It's a little bit higher. But
put this in perspective, Mount Everest, is the tallest mountain
in the world, five and a half miles high. Another way of thinking
about this, I could give you the feet, that meant nothing
to me, how many feet tall it is. So here's another way of
putting this into perspective for us city slickers. It is like
20 Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other. You say,
that doesn't sound too big. OK, well, here's the Empire State
Building, at least part of it. It's not the whole thing. The
bottom is chopped off. But I like this picture because
it showed how big it is by comparison. Then guess what I did, because
I'm a visuals person. You know what I did? There we
go. That's about 14 partial Empire
State Buildings. Really, I should have about six
more, and the picture should be a little taller each. But
try to visualize yourself way down here, a little speck of
this green dot. Way, way, way down here. Stack
these up about up to here. Drop it down. And imagine you're standing down
here somewhere, looking up. Let me ask you a question. What
if I told you, move that mountain? Is that mountain going anywhere?
No, it's not. The Nepalese call this mountain
Sagarmatha, Sagarmatha, the head of the sky or the goddess of
the sky. Now, the Tibetans call this mountain
Komolungma. The Chinese have another name
similar to that. And the idea again is some kind
of a god or some goddess. It's fascinating because when
you study mountains and you study mythologies and various pagan
traditions and views, mountains are often associated with gods
and demons and these kind of things. Why is that? Because
they're so imposing and so amazing and so awe-inspiring These things,
these mountains, cause you to think about God. But what did I tell you about
God? We try to push Him away through false religion. We create
smaller gods, other gods, to squeeze between us and Him. And
so we push away the obvious reality and we explain it in other ways.
But this is one thing in creation that should cause us to think
about God. Remember what I told you about Mount St. Helens? God
is the one who can move mountains. He can take a huge mountain and
blow the top and the side out. He can do that. We can't do that. Maybe we could do that a little
piece of dynamite at a time, but we can't do that. Now, if
you can sit and just kind of try to imagine what it'd be like
to stand and see this thing, if we had Dawa here tonight,
he could tell us what that's like exactly. He lives there
nearby. Now take that all into perspective
and look again back at Genesis 17. Abram was 99 years old. His wife was 89 or 90 years old. Was she past menopause, do you
think? Yeah, she was way past. It was impossible for this lady
to have a baby. Physically, impossible. Scientifically,
biologically, it wasn't possible. There was nothing possible about
it. Abraham was quite old himself,
about 100 years old. He probably wasn't material for
having a baby either. And here he is, he still doesn't
have a child. And God comes to him and he says,
I am El Shaddai. I am the God, the mountain that
towers above every mountain. Walk before me. How do you walk
before a mountain? You walk and you never lose sight
of the mountain because it's always there. Here's the question I want to
ask you tonight. What mountains are in the backdrop or the horizon
of your life that overshadow the promises of God through various
means? Perhaps, perhaps you find yourself
looking at something that God needs to do in your life. Maybe
you even have a promise from the Bible, and that thing is
a physical limitation. You're not sure if the doctors
can resolve it. You're not sure if anything can be done. It's
a real thing. It's a mountain. It's immovable,
and you are unable to move it and to make it change. But hear
God saying to you, I am El Shaddai. I am bigger than that. Is there a skill challenge? Is there something that you need
to be able to do but you just don't have the skills? You're
not good enough. You're not smart enough. You're
not strong enough. Is there a relationship that
needs to be fixed? between you and somebody else,
or there's somebody who needs intervention in their life so
a relationship can be brought back to where it needs to be.
Is there some relationship in your life or relationships? Maybe
you've got a range of mountain relationships, a whole range
of them, that you're overwhelmed. How do I see God work in all
of these relationships, these people's lives? Maybe you have
financial limitations. Maybe there are things staring
at you that need to be done but the bank account doesn't have
the ability to do them. Maybe there are dreams and visions
that God has given to you, callings that God has given to you, goals
that God has given to you, and you're getting old and they haven't
been established yet. Or maybe you're young and you
have plenty of time, but you see no way you'll ever get there.
You feel like you'll never get there, you're gonna sell out
for something less. God is bigger than that. Here's what happens. We walk
through life. And as Abraham, we get older and older. And what
happens when you get older and older? What happens to your stature
and the way you tend to stand? You start doing this, right? What am I doing? I am shrinking, yes, but what
else? I'm hunching, and what's the problem with that? The things that God wants to
do in my life are looking higher and higher and bigger and bigger
and bigger and more impossible. And I'm not looking up. In life, We need to continue
to walk before him and keep our head up and realize, wait, yes,
that is a big mountain, but there's a bigger one. It's so big, you
have to look way up. You need to step back. It's so
imposing, the other ones look like little pebbles. This mountain, the Empire State
Building, the big buildings some of you walk around every day,
these things are nothing compared to the mountain of God. And sometimes
we need to step back and just look up in the heavens and say,
that's my God. What am I so concerned about?
Why do these things look so impossible? What is your mountain? As pastor,
I am getting to know all of us better and better. We are about
a week and a half away from one year here at Faith. Hard to believe.
I didn't think we did too many things this last year, but I'm
looking back and I don't know how we did all those things. This has been an amazing year.
I want to share something with you, a faith vision, a goal that
I have even for the next few weeks here. I'm going to share
that for prayer. But I believe God has some great things ahead
for our church. He's done amazing things in the
last year. As I get to know you, one of
the treasures and the joys of pastoring is I get to share in
your life. And I get emails and phone calls
and conversations. And I have the privilege that
not many of you have. I get to store a lot of things
in my heart. Kind of like Mary. Mary took the things that she
learned from Jesus' life and she hid them in her heart and
she pondered them for a while. There are things that I know
that I can't share with other people. that I know about some
of you because you've shared them with me and I'm getting
to know all of you better and better. You know that's a privilege
of a lifetime and I get to pray about those things and what might
look like an ordinary development or might not even be known to
some people when it's a development. I know about it and I know it's
a big deal. Things like this happen. It's a joy. It's a pleasure. And I know more
and more some of the mountains and more and more of our lives.
And I would encourage each one of you as a shepherd tending
the sheep, get your chin up. Get your head up. Stop staring
at those mountains. You've got a whole range of them
in front of you. As soon as you cross that one, there's going
to be another one. That's just how life is. Get
your chin up on El Shaddai. the God of the great mountain
who is bigger than everything around. That's the God who made
the promises. Whatever the promises are, you
have excuses, don't you? But those are all the little
mountains. He's bigger than those. So that's the simple challenge
tonight. Get your chin up, get your eye on El Shaddai, God Almighty,
the God of the Great, Great Mountain.
Who Is El Shaddai? - A Study Into God Almighty
Series Names Of God
| Sermon ID | 67152223395 |
| Duration | 17:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Genesis 17:1 |
| Language | English |
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