Behold No.1 El Shaddai

What I want us to do is to focus our attention on the person of God right now. We're going to have a chorus that will speak to us about one of the titles of the name of God, of the names of God. And then we'll listen to a reading that emphasizes that particular title.

Then with Scripture as a back cloth, our understanding therefore enlarged, we'll sing the song again. by the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai.

I come, Conor, Adonai. We will praise and lift you high. El Shaddai.

Through your love and through the ram, you saved the son of Abraham. Through the power of your hand, turned the sea into dry land. To the outcast on her knees, you are the God who really sees.

And by your might, you set your children free. El Shaddai, El Shaddai. El, El your Adonai.

Age to age, you're still the same. Through the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai.

I come, Conor, Adonai. We will praise and lift you high. El Shaddai.

Through the years, you made it clear that the time of Christ was near. Though the people couldn't see what Messiah ought to be. Though your word contained the plan, they just could not understand.

Your most awesome work was done through the frailty of your son. El Shaddai, El Shaddai. El, El your Adonai.

Age to age, you're still the same. By the power of the name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai.

I come, Conor, Adonai. We will praise and lift you high. El Shaddai.

Our thoughts are turned to El Shaddai. That's the Hebrew name for the Lord God Almighty. And we've got some readings from the book of Genesis.

The first is chapter 17. The first eight verses. This is when God enters into a covenant relationship with Abram.

When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, El Shaddai. Walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.

Abram fell face down and God said to him, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram.

Your name will be Abraham. For I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful.

I will make nations of you and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. To be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

The whole land of Canaan where you are now an alien. I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you and I will be their God. And now we're going to look at chapter 35 where God reaffirms his promise with Jacob.

Verse 9. After Jacob returned from Padom Aram, God appeared to him again and blessed him. God said to him, your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob. Your name will be Israel.

So he named him Israel. And God said to him, I am God Almighty, El Shaddai. Be fruitful and increase in number.

A nation and a community of nations will come from you and kings will come from your body. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you and I will give this land to your descendants after you. Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.

And now we're looking at Genesis chapter 43. Verse 43. Where in great anguish, Jacob allows his sons and Benjamin to return to Egypt.

Chapter 43, verse 11. Then their father Israel said to them, if it must be, then do this. Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift.

A little balm and a little honey. Some spices and myrrh. Some pistachio nuts and almonds.

Take double the amount of silver with you, for you must return the silver that was put back into the mouths of your sacks. Perhaps it was a mistake. Take your brother also and go back to the man at once.

And may God Almighty, El Shaddai, grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you. As for me, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved. And the last one is from chapter 49.

At the end of his life, Jacob is blessing his sons. And this is the blessing for Joseph. Verse 22.

Joseph is a fruitful vine. A fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall. With bitterness, archers attacked him.

They shot at him with hostility. But his bow remained steady. His strong arms stayed supple.

Because of the hand of the mighty one of Jacob. Because of the shepherd, the rock of Israel. Because of your father's God who helps you.

Because of the Almighty, El Shaddai, who blesses you with blessings of the heavens above, blessings of the deep that lies below. Blessings of the breast and womb. Your father's blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills.

Let all these rest on the head of Joseph, on the brow of the prince among his brothers. And may the Lord God Almighty, El Shaddai, be present and bless us all in the tabernacle today. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Anon, Adonai, Age to age you're still the same, by the power of your name.

El Shaddai, El Shaddai, O come, Konner, Adonai, We will praise and lift you high, El Shaddai. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, El Anon, Adonai, Age to age you're still the same, by the power of your name. El Shaddai, El Shaddai, O come, Konner, Adonai, We will praise and lift you high, El Shaddai.

I'd like you to have your Bibles open at that passage of scripture read to us. And that is the first one, Genesis in chapter 17. And as you're finding it, listen to this.

This was written by a great man. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago. His name is Ann Selmond.

He wrote a tremendous book. Which answers the question, why did God become man? Que Deus Homo. And he says this in this book.

Speaking to men and encouraging them in the study and the pursuit of God. Up now, slight man. Flee for a little while thy occupations.

Hide thyself for a time from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside now thy burdensome cares. And put away thy toilsome business.

Yield room for some little time to God. And rest for a little time in Him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind.

Shut out all thoughts save that of God. And such as can aid thee in seeking Him. Close thy door and seek Him.

Speak now, my whole heart. Speak now to God saying, I seek thy face. Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

And come thou now, O Lord my God. Teach my heart where and how it may seek thee. Where and how it may find thee.

Que Deus Homo. A book from yesteryear. A more modern book, equally as great.

Is that written by Dr. James Packer. And in the preface of his book, Knowing God, he says this. Memorable words, they've stuck in my mind since I first read that book 20 years or so ago.

As fools have wanted to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a book on God. And there is a sense in which no preachers ever approach this subject without a great deal of temerity. Because God by very definition is undefinable.

God is incomprehensible. The writer of Job records the question, Canst thou by searching find out God? And in the 35th through to the 40th chapter of the book of Job, you get some of the most excellent descriptive passages about the creative handiwork of God found in the whole of Scripture. I do suggest that you read the latter chapters of Job through today.

And yet they're prefaced by the remarks, These are but the outskirts of his ways. When you understand a fragment, there's still the whole loaf. When you've got the loaf, there's still the bakery.

When you've got the bakery, there are the whole fields of ripening corn. In other words, you cannot fathom this God. George Beverly Shea, he sang a song in the 50s.

We can only see a little of the ocean as we stand by the rocky shore. But out there beyond the eye's horizon, there's more. We can only see a little of God's loving, a few rich treasures from his mighty store.

And out there beyond the eye's horizon, there's more. There's more. But the fact that our task is impossible to achieve should not deflect from the responsibility that is ours at least to try to seek out this God, to know him a little more than we do at the moment.

So let's talk about his name just for a second or two. In that song, and I've put the music somewhere. Don't worry, I'm not going to sing it.

But there is reference made to, I'll find it later, Joy. You won't have lost it forever. Reference is made to Adonai, which is a Hebrew word for God, Elohim, which is also a Hebrew term for God.

And then this name that we're going to be homing in on, particularly El Shaddai or El Shaddai. There were many names that were given for God, for the attributes of God in the Old Testament. He's called Jehovah Tisikendu, the Lord our righteousness.

He's called Jehovah Rapha, the Lord our healer, and so forth. So many badges, says Charles Spurgeon, that this great God can rightfully wear. And what we're going to be doing during this course of addresses, during these course of addresses, is to try to home in on certain aspects, certain attributes of God's character as we find them revealed in the Old Testament.

Now we do with a decided advantage over against the prophets and the patriarchs because we live in New Testament times. And the Old Testament is groping to that full knowledge of God that you get in the face of our Lord Jesus. You remember the little girl at Sunday school who's starting to draw a picture of God and the teacher says, what are you doing, Sally? And she says, I'm drawing God.

And the teacher says, but Sally, nobody knows what God looks like. And she says, well, they will do when I'm finished. Now you can forgive the little girl, but it's true to say of our Lord Jesus, they'll know what God looks like when I'm through.

But here in the Old Testament, there are anticipations, there are clues to this mighty revelation. Sometimes in Genesis, men and women will give God their own name for him. For example, Melchizedek will talk about God, talk about him as a great provider, the God most high, maker of heaven and earth.

And there's a little Egyptian au pair girl. I'm glad that that story is in Genesis. You remember her name is Hagar.

And she's been cruelly, incredibly treated by Sarai. She's been pushed out of the camp simply because she's given birth to a child and the father of the child is none other than Abraham. And it's really Sarah's doing, as I'll explain later, Sarah trying to tinker around with the sovereignty of God.

That's always a dangerous practice. This girl finds herself expiring in the scrubland, twixt Palestine and Egypt. And in despair, she cries out.

And there's that tremendous revelation of God to her, Elra, Lord, you see me, the God who sees. But perhaps the most important aspects of Genesis in its teaching is not from the starting point of the names that were given to him by men and women, but the names that he owns for himself. Shakespeare's character, one of them, asks the question, what's in a name? And the answer is there's a lot in a name, especially the name of God, El Shaddai.

When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. L-I. Shah, Hebrew for who? Shaddai, Hebrew possibly for mighty.

The word has got some idea of the mountains. It's got some idea of permanency. It's not too easy to narrow it down.

You've got to let the context actually define that latter part of the Hebrew term, El Shaddai. And there is every reason to suggest that the term is conveying the mightiness, the sufficiency of God. Again, it's Spurgeon who helps us by saying that God is to be known as the All-Sufficient One.

If you want another person commenting from yesteryear, I give you Matthew Henry. The God who is enough. I like that.

Is that how you think of your God? The God who is enough. Says the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians, our sufficiency is of God, the God who is enough. He has El Shaddai at the back of his mind.

My dear friend, whoever you are, as you came into the tab, I want to tell you that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is enough. Enough to meet our basic needs. Enough to meet our needs more than we could ever conceivably ask for.

He is the God of all sufficiency, El Shaddai. Number one, the content of the name. What does it contain? Well, it really hints at what theologians call His immutability.

You say, well, there you go again with your long words. Well, hang on, I'll teach you what it means. After all, you pay me for doing something.

It means that God is self-sufficient. It means that He's thoroughly self-contained. It means that He requires nothing.

And that distinguishes Him immediately from you and me. We're not self-contained. We do have great needs.

But any need that this God has, He has by choice. And His choice is to relate to ordinary people like you and me. But He remains El Shaddai, the All-Sufficient One, intact in and of Himself.

He has us in His hands. But we never have Him. He's immutable.

What's more, He's eternal. The Bible says, from eternity to eternity thou art God. Soza helps us, from vanishing point to vanishing point thou art God.

You will change. I won't be cruel to test you or to tell you how you can test that you will change. But you know that time does write its defeatures upon our faces.

But as far as God is concerned, there is no trace of time at all. He is the Eternal One. He was the same yesterday as He is today.

And tomorrow He will be exactly the same. He will never shift. He will never change.

There is no variableness. This is our God, the Immutable, Eternal God. He's awesome.

He's majestic. There's another lovely word that's gone out of use in the English idiom as we employ it today. At least I've rarely heard it.

It's the word creatureliness. You go up to the Downs in an evening, a delicious experience which I love so much, and watch those stars, and see the moon if it's a clear night. And you think of yourself, and you're so small, you're so utterly insignificant, not so.

And somehow you get amazed with a sense of the space, the capaciousness of it all. And from that you know, because you're Christian people, and because you use common sense, that there is a great God whose power pervades the universe. And one day that God says to Abraham, as He had a similar experience to yours on Cicero's Ring, He says, Abraham, look up and see the stars.

And Abraham knows what God is saying. He's speaking of the creatureliness of Abraham himself. These stars, I placed them there.

Now number those stars, Abraham. And I tell you this, that your progeny, those who come from under your loins, will be more prolific. But my point is this, that God is awesome in His majesty.

I tell you that if you go to service time after time, time after time, and you never pause, and you never stop, and there's never a silence, and there's never meditation, then an aspect of the character of God has never been taught properly. It says, Job, I will put my hand over my mouth, as he's brought face to face with the awesomeness of God. And Peter falls at the feet of Jesus as though he was dead, and so does John, you remember, in his vision on the Isle of Patmos.

The contents of the Term El Shaddai. But then the contexts. There were three or four that were given to us in that well-presented Bible reading.

Here is the immediate one. It's that of Abraham. It's 14 years since God last spoke to him.

If you've ever thought that you wish you were a patriarch or a prophet and you didn't live in the 20th century because God seems always to be speaking to Old Testament people, then let me tell you, your understanding of Biblical content is defective. You who live in the apostolic era are thrice blessed over against the patriarchs and the prophets because encapsulated into a book is God's Word, which is written in the present tense so that you and I can constantly be referring to it. Fourteen years have gone by and God has not spoken a word to this man Abraham.

He's 99 years of age and God decides to break the silence. And He does so wonderfully. El Shaddai.

He whispers in his ears. And Abraham, who is a cute man, the founder of the Jewish race, knows what this God is revealing to him because time and time again in the book of Genesis you will discover when God employs the title El Shaddai He addresses it to human need and human frailty. 99 years old, this man, his wife almost of equal age and he's fatherless, therefore she's childless.

And God has promised that through Abraham all the nations of the world will be blessed. And the only way in which God's purpose can be fulfilled will be by the miraculous intervention in the physical character or in the physical components of both Abraham and Sarah. El Shaddai.

The Almighty One can make an aged couple have a child. Here is Jacob. A worm and no man.

That's how Jacob is described in Scripture. That's why Charles Wesley says of Jacob, he, speaking of God, he makes a worm his friend. Here he is at Peneo.

He knows very little about this majesty of God that God so reveals Himself. And Jacob is informed that God is El Shaddai. And later on when he's just an old man and he's got his sons around him and he's lost one or so, he thinks, dead and gone, gored to death by a wild animal.

The request comes from Egypt that Benjamin, his dearest son, be allowed to go back into Egypt in the company of his brothers in order to get more food. And Jacob is terrified that something will happen to Benjamin. But there is no food and they'll all die, including Benjamin, unless he relents.

So what does Jacob do? He invokes the name of El Shaddai and says, let this Almighty God be with you. And on his deathbed, the circumstances being much happier as far as the family is concerned, he has his adult sons in front of him and he gives one blessing after another blessing and Joseph comes on the scene and he blesses him as he refers to El Shaddai. Why does he use that name for Joseph? Because Joseph, more than any of the brothers, illustrates the power of God.

For what else explains the miracle which preserved Joseph's spirituality as he was in Egypt? What else explains the reason why this kid who came in from the backwoods should now be frontal stage on the political scene in Egypt the second most powerful man, arguably the most powerful man in the whole of the world? Who can explain this? Only one, El Shaddai. You see my point? The content of the name. The contexts of the disclosure.

And the changes that this name will bring in the experience of people who relate to El Shaddai. Abraham will no longer have the shortened version of his name. Verse 5, chapter 17, no longer will you be called Abraham, your name will be called Abraham.

And the interpolation of a few more letters gives God the right to emphasize what he's already conceded. I have made you a father of many nations. He's not had his son, but God says I have made you a father of many nations because when God determines something, even in the future, as far as God's concerns, it is done.

And Jacob is destined to be the man who will carry through the covenantal promises that God gives to Abraham. And the day will come when Jacob will lose his name, Jacob. No longer a twister, no longer a supplanter, you will be Israel, prince, with God and amongst men.

Why? Because when God discloses his name in a personal way, he affects the character of the one who receives the disclosure. Don't you understand this? The secrets of this book do not reveal themselves to scholars and intellectuals and theologians. Those who have a hardened heart, those who come to this book just academically, they prostitute this book.

The only way in which God will disclose himself is to the humble heart. And when God discloses himself, he places a new name in the mind, in the personality of the individual with whom he enters into a covenantal relationship. This is why you should always hallow and revere this book.

This is why you should always hallow and revere this God. Because this God, our God, is the one who gives people who follow him a new name and writes their name down in the book of the Lamb in heaven, indicating forever that their eternal destiny is sealed. Monat for Haribinah.

We would like his life to have been extended because of our selfishness. We loved his gentle character. And our hearts go out in sorrow and sympathy to Joyce.

But when a man is caught up in the eternal beyond, there is no need to mourn for him. For God has placed his name upon that man, his name upon that woman. And Louis is right, the survivors take the brunt.

This God is our God forever and ever. He changes not only your name, he changes your fortune. This is why when he reveals himself as El Shaddai to Abraham and to Jacob, he then speaks about the land.

Verse 9, As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. And he goes on to speak about the land of Israel, which he will give to Abraham and to Jacob. When God enters into covenantal relationship with ordinary men and women, not only does he change their name, but he gives them a destiny that they never had before.

He gives them a wealth that they had never and could never have gained at the human level. When God becomes El Shaddai to you, then you will be amongst the richest of all the peoples of this world. When the Promised Land was farmed out amongst the tribes, only 11 tribes received a deposit of land, do you remember? Levi was the exception.

And God says to the representatives of the Levitical order, I will be your inheritance. And Tozer says that God at that point blessed Levi immeasurably above all the tribes. Now put that through into the New Testament, take the negative and have it developed in New Testament terms.

We have an inheritance which is unfading and uncorruptible. We are people with a treasure. Our casket is filled with the gems of salvation and sanctification and glorification.

We have a hope that is steadfast and certain, gone through the curtain and touching the throne. You may be living at pauper level, you may have lost your job, you may be in danger of losing your health, but listen to me my friend, if El Shaddai has whispered his name into your ear, and there has been that leap in your heart, there has been that quickening of the pulse as you realize that you belong to him, then I tell you that there is no force in heaven, no force in earth, no force under the earth that can impoverish you. You are amongst the blessed of eternity.

You are as a prince before God. He makes a change, he changes the name, he changes the fortune. And what's more, he applies certain correctives and controls.

Corrections? I am God all sufficient, quite sufficient to fulfill my own purposes, Abraham, without you tinkering about with them. You say, what do you mean? Well, look at that au pair. Look at Abraham as he says to God, trying to get him out of a dilemma just a few chapters before, let my servant live before you.

And a smile comes across the face of the almighty, have you not learned? I do not need you, Abraham, to tinker around with my sovereignty. My directives will come into being without your help and interference. And Hagar would never have gone through that turmoil and torment in the wilderness had Sarah and Abraham learned that lesson early.

And you know, it's the same with us, is it not? So we're like Rebecca, just to shift the scenario for a moment. Why Rebecca? Well, you recall, she wants her son Jacob to inherit the blessing from Isaac. Now God has already promised that.

And instead of taking God at His word, what does she do when Esau, the oldest, goes off into the country to get some venison for his father? With deception, she covers her youngest son with the skin of an animal and she gets him to go before the father and for the blind Isaac to be so deceived that he takes Jacob to be Esau. And the whole thing stinks. Not the nice smell of venison.

Not the outworking of the purposes of God in the fashion that He would have had all things come together. It smells of human interference. But you see, if you can say God is El Shaddai, you can stop tinkering around with the engine.

Leave it to the engineer to sort out. Learn from David, who when he comes across King Saul, you remember, here is David as a fugitive, a sort of Hebrew Robin Hood. And he's been taken from pillar to post by Saul.

He lives the life of an animal, of a wild animal, inasmuch as he feels that he's just being followed every moment by Saul and by his men. He has a right to have enmity in his heart towards Saul, son of Kish. And one day, David, showing his nobility, comes across Saul, who is asleep in a cave.

And David has a sword. And he could have butchered Saul. And he could theologically have excused himself.

God has promised that one day I shall be king. I, David, but not like that. And so what does David do? He takes the sword and he cuts just a little bit of Saul's outer garment and shows later on, as he hoists it high, that Saul actually was at the human level in his power, but far be it from David to touch the Lord's anointing.

God breathed the word El Shaddai into David's ear when he was looking after the sheep as a lad in Bethlehem on those undulating slopes around the town. Hear our corrections, I say. Hear our controls.

Is anything too hard for the Lord? No, not for El Shaddai. Therefore, take your hands off the situation. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Jonah, listen.

Is anything? Then why have you got from Thomas Cooks a ticket in your pocket sending you to Tarshish when you should be in Nineveh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Then Jeremiah, why do you say you can't be a preacher? Then Moses, why do you say that you are not a man with lips that can handle words? Why do you need Aaron? Moses, have you not heard of El Shaddai? You say you can't cope with old age. Some of you people, I speak with tender heart. You say you can't cope with your singleness.

You say you can't cope with your marital situation. You say you can't cope with the circumstances that you find yourself in in life. There is one who chuckles in the heavens and then puts his lips and presses them against your ear and he says, El Shaddai, you were never asked to cope on your own.

You are asked to cope with me and God and you together can handle every and all situations. I spoke to you on the content, on the context, on the changes, on the corrections and controls. My last scene, it won't last for more than a couple of minutes.

The conclusions. I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.

I virtually spelled out the conclusions in my final few sentences when I was talking about the controls. Listen to the Apostle Paul, you see. Here he is and he's writing to the Romans and Paul knows something about difficulty.

Far more difficulties than you and I have had. And though sometimes he's beaten, sometimes he's bruised, sometimes he thinks that the next billowing wave will drag him to a watery dungeon as he's coped with the umpteenth shipwreck. Nonetheless, it doesn't stop him from having fullness of faith.

And in one of the great passages of the Bible, did I say the ninth chapter, maybe I didn't mention it, the eighth chapter of Romans, he says this, If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, this God who is enough, this God who has done more than we could ever ask or think, than we could ever imagine, he who did not spare his own son, he who sent him to the cross of Calvary, he who endured men and women turning their contemptuous gaze and allowing their obscenities to be directed towards the cross, he who did not spare his son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors. Through him who loved us, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the problem with the Apostle Paul.

You think you've got something new to say and you discover that the man pinched it all ages before and paraded it so eloquently in front of the church. Here is the exposition of El Shaddai. Nothing shall ever separate us from the love of God.

Nothing shall ever prevent us from achieving the purposes of God. Brothers and sisters, here in Worthing Tabernacle, I present to you El Shaddai, our great God, the almighty one who displays his power within the context of human frailty so that no one could say that you achieved anything of your own. But it all came about because this covenant God used you in the fulfillment of his purposes.

This is our God. Blessed, most glorious, the angel of days, almighty, victorious, thy praise may we praise. May God earth of glory and Father of Christ thy angels adore thee no pain in their sight.

O Lord, we would pray that thou help us to dream this our final standard of life, thy will be. Hear, O truth, we praise thee, O God, only one, in might and wealth to keep all our rights. Blessed, most glorious, the angel of days, almighty, victorious, thy praise may we praise.

We go into this week with praise and thanksgiving, ever whispering moments of depression and despondency into our ears. Your blessed name, El Shaddai. Good morning.

Have a good day.