God's Goodness Series

Sunday

March 30, 2008 River of Life Ministries Pastor Michael West

Series: His majesty, His Names part 3 — El Shaddai

Sermon: God’s Goodness Scripture: Psalm 139:17

Read: Isaiah 63:7 / Psalm 34:8, 36:7

In all my adventures, from home to home to foster home. From one school to another. From my adventures in the US NAVY, different jobs and travels in the world. From all the setbacks or if you will, temporary setback, disillusionments, heartaches, let downs, ups and downs, happiness and even in my losses, I can and will speak on God’s kindness, goodness and mercies. For He is El Shaddai.

He reminds me, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness…” (II Cor. 12:9 KJV)

...‘My grace is enough for you: for power is at full stretch in weakness.’ It is, then, about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me…” (NJB)

El Shaddai: the All Sufficient One, the God of the Mountains, the Lord God Almighty! God, the source, the all-sufficient source of all of our blessings. God, the all-powerful, never-failing God. God Who is bigger than our problems and is more than able to handle them, if we would let Him.

He is El Shaddai. His power is seen in His judgment and in the covenant He made with Abraham—

Genesis 17:1-3, 48:3, 49:25, 35:11 and in Psalm 90:2—

"Before the mountains were born, before the earth and the world came to birth, from eternity to eternity you are God." (NJB)

El Shaddai. Mighty God, what a wonder You are.

The church today needs to rise above it’s big bad spiritual self and become humble in the sight of the Lord. We say we are grafted in, but we never seem to rise to the occasion to bear fruit. Let’s face it, the church today isn’t full of new disciples in the making, we are full of ourselves. We are full of transplants. People calling themselves Christian yet, fail to follow Christ and, in their disjointedness feel compelled by something they call the “spirit” led them to what would be a better church. And so, history repeats itself.

No tribe or nation ever rising morally above its religion. If a persons religion says that God is not all that, then their religion will be based and blossom around that concept of God. If they believe that God is a big God, true, noble, all-loving, even though they are not redeemed by Jesus Christ, their religion will follow that concept of God. Ever upward they will go, a pagan religion without redemption.

Take Christianity today. At any given time is strong or weak based upon the belief of the believer or church and in that strength or weakness is found the concept of God. Who He is. Unfortunately, we have forgotten El Shaddai. We have forgotten the wonder of God. The mighty God we serve. We have forgotten Who He is and it is evident in the way we are come Sunday morning.

Our religion has become ineffective in the world. We are being rejected more each day. The world wants us to take our little god and go somewhere else. Our religion has become powerless because we believe in a powerless god. Our religion is weak because our god is weak. Our faith is weak because we have believed in the words of men, rather than the Word of God. We have stopped seeing God for Who He really is.

It’s time for us as Christians to wake up, to rise up, to speak up to believe up, to brush off the world and raise the standard of Jesus Christ above the rest. We need to repent and walk in faith again before it gets any later than it is already.

David wrote Psalm 34:3 when he was faking insanity and Abimelech drove him away; “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.” (Amplified)

The word magnify means to make larger and it can be seen two different ways: make God look bigger than He is or see Him as big as He is. Put something under a magnifying glass and it will look larger than what it is and that would be impossible to do with God, so magnify here must mean that we must try to see God, the best we can, as to how big He really is.

The church, our church, will only be as great as our conception of God. As individual Christians, we will succeed or fail depending upon what we think and believe about God.

All Christians need to have a knowledge of the Holy One, a deeper knowledge of El Shaddai, God Almighty, God of Wonder. We can do that by way of the Word of God, but we can also know Him by way of nature around us. Sometimes it helps to have a good visual.