El Elyon Series

We are surrounded by the most amazing technology, aren’t we? Imagine trying to explain to someone just 30 years ago what a “cell” phone is … or explain the “internet.” Technology is changing so quickly that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it. Now the rage is 5G … I couldn’t tell you the difference between 4G and 5G because I have no idea what the difference is between 3G and 4G is … I don’t even know what the “G” stands for, to be honest. We’ve gone from floppy discs to hard drives to the “cloud” … from “kilo” bytes to “mega” bytes to “giga” bytes and “tera” bytes.

Now it seems like the computer or the internet is able to read or anticipate your thoughts. I start to type a sentence in an e-mail and before I’ve typed two words it’s finishing the sentence for me. The same thing happens when I start typing a search on the internet. I start typing “hurricane” and it immediately asks me if I’m looking for the latest information on Hurricane Laura … and it’s right about 85% of the time. What’s a little bit creepy to me is how it … whatever “it” is … keeps track of my inquiries and selections and then makes recommendations. “Hey, Gordon, you like this movie, we think that you might want to watch this movie or these movies?” YouTube does that … and sometimes they’ll put up a little teaser. “Hey, Gordon, you want to see who wins in a fight between a lion and hippo?” They got me with that one.

I wish I hadn’t watched it for two reasons. One, it was pretty brutal. Lions are pretty tough but the hippo in the video just decimated that poor lion. I felt guilty for watching it. I don’t like to watch anything die … and I especially don’t consider it to be “entertainment.”

I wish I hadn’t watched it for another reason. Because I watched it, YouTube began flooding me with more videos of wild animals attacking other wild animals … the combination was staggering. “Jaguar attacks crocodile” … “Tiger attacks python” … “Python attacks tiger and then a lion, a water buffalo, a crocodile, and another python.” If you’re interested in that kind of thing, they have tons videos of crocodiles attacking every creature you can think of. They’ve got videos of octopi attacking sharks … bears attacking mountain lions … Baboons attacking lions … and hippos attacking [pause] … you guessed it … crocodiles.

The outcome of these “encounters” can be quite surprising. Sometimes the predator wins … and sometimes the prey wins. As I said, it’s usually pretty graphic stuff. I only watched that one video of the hippo and the lion and they finally stopped sending more of them after about six or seven months … I don’t remember exactly when they stopped … I’m just glad that they stopped … well, almost stopped. Every now and then they’ll try to tempt me something like a “chicken versus a rhino” video or a “duck versus a crocodile” video but I don’t take the “click bait” as they call it.

There was … or still is … I don’t know if it’s still on the air or not … a sort of human version of this show called “Deadliest Warrior.” The purpose of the show is … or was … to scientifically discover who would win if they ever faced each other in combat: A Roman foot soldier versus a Viking warrior … a Japanese Shogun warrior versus a medieval knight … a ninja versus a cowboy. It turns out that no matter how good you are with Chinese throwing stars, a bow and arrow, or num-chucks … a Colt. .45 wins every time.

Lions, bears, hippos, crocodiles, Roman soldiers, or ninjas … as one king in the Bible found out … nothing on this earth is a match for “El Elyon” … “The Most High God.”

“El Elyon” is probably not a name that many of you are familiar with but … like all the other names that we’ve studied so far … it is another one of those interesting and unique names for God. You should recognize the first name or word … “El” … the generic Hebrew word or name for “God.” “Elyon” is a qualifying noun that means “high.” It comes from the Hebrew verb “alah” … which means “to ascend” or “mount up.”

This is the “follow me and pay close attention” part of my sermon. “El Alah” means “God Ascending” but when you turn “alah” from a verb into a noun … “elyon” … it means “God Most High” … “God Supreme.” God is not “alah” … “ascending” up the hierarchy of gods … He is the top God. There are no other gods above Him. He is the one that the other gods aspire to … who wish to rise above. The other gods may try to “alah” … to “ascend”… to His height but there is no other god where He is and there is no other god higher than Him. “El Elyon” … “The God Most High” … the supreme God … the one that all the other gods are trying to surpass but cannot because He is so high above all the other gods that they have no hope of ever getting close to reaching Him … let alone over take him and surpass Him.