Getting To Know God – Jehovah Shammah – God Is There, Series

Getting to Know God – Jehovah Shammah – God is There,

Ezek 40:1-5, 48:30-35

Pray

Well, over the last couple of months, we have been working our way through a series on the names of God. You may be pleased to know that we’ve reached the last name.

In biblical times, names tell us important things about people. – People were named after - events in their lives,

- circumstances they found themselves in,

- personal characteristics or even

- their ministry function.

And God’s names are no different. They are an important source of knowledge of who God. Over the last months, we’ve looked at many names …

- Elohim – God the creator

- El Elyon – God Most High above all other kings

- El Roi – The God who sees our pain and present circumstances as he saw Hagar’s pain

- El Shaddai – God the All Sufficient One – able to give us what we need just as he gave Abraham a son in his old age.

- Adonai – The Lord

- Jehovah Jireh – The Lord will Provide as he provided a ram for Abraham

- Jehovah Nissi – The Lord is our Banner who goes into battle before his people

- Immanuel – God With Us in and though the person of Christ

- Jehovah Mekoddishkem – The Lord who Sanctifies you

- Jehovah Sabaoth – The Lord of Hosts who has all the resources needed to provide for us

- Jehovah Shalom – The Lord is Peace who seeks peace with us in our relationship with him.

- Jehovah Tisidkenu – The Lord our Righteousness who gives us righteousness through his son.

And today we come to the last name we are going to look at in this series. It is the name Jehovah Shammah – The Lord is There. The only time this name is used is in the passage we read earlier in Ezekiel. However, the concept that the Lord is Present with us or is located in a specific place is right throughout scripture.

Well as usual, I looked up a bit of the background to this name to understand what it was meaning. Jehovah is not new – it is the name of God which we’ve come across again and again in this set of studies. The word “There”, however, is interesting. I looked up the Hebrew term for this word and guess what it meant … “There.” That’s right – there means there. Profound isn’t it. The Ball is over there. Not here, there. So the name the “Lord is There”, means, the “Lord is There”, speaking about some location.

And where is God in Ezekiel’s prophesy which we just read? He is in the city. What city? Jerusalem. In chapter 40, we read that Ezekiel had a vision. It was in 574BC, in the 25th year of his exile, 14 years after the destruction of Jerusalem. Remember the diagram I showed you last week. I know it is a bit confusing, but it is a great diagram for you to have implanted in your mind. It helps you unpack much of the meaning in the books of history and prophets. Let me try to explain it to you again. After Solomon’s reign, the nation of Israel had a family feud and split in two. They formed 2 kingdoms. The Northern kingdom was called Israel and the Southern Kingdom was called Judah. They lived separate lives and so I’ve shown this by 2 lines on my time lines one for Israel and one for Judah. I’ve also shown a third line representing the northern empires at this time. If you know your history, you’d know that the northern kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians in 723BC and that is the last we hear about the northern kingdom. I explained last week, how the Southern kingdom, Judah was also invaded and carted off by Babylon, who had by this time overthrown the Assyrians Empire in the North. They invaded Judah in 607BC and carted off all the best young men into slavery. Daniel was one of the men taken prisoner. They allowed the kings of Judah to continue to rule in the South, but only if they paid great taxes. This happened for about 10 years until king Jehoiachin decided he didn’t like paying taxes and so stopped. So King Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon said, if that is how you want to play the game, take that – and he came down and invaded Jerusalem and carted the king and a heap of other people off into slavery. The prophet Ezekiel whose prophecy we are reading this morning was taken captive in this invasion. 10 years later in 587BC, Nebuchadnezzar was again upset at Judah and came down again and this time destroyed Jerusalem completely – the temple as well.