We’re all familiar with the monthly magazine “Readers Digest,” amen? Besides stories and articles, it’s full of interesting little tidbits of information … some enlightening … some challenging … some funny. They usually appear at the end of articles as little slices of life that readers have submitted in the hopes of being published. One such tidbit is the story of little “Fruit Stand.”
When the 1960s ended, San Francisco’s Height-Ashbury District converted from a hippie enclave to upscale neighborhoods complete with high-rent apartments and condos … so the hippies left. If you want hippies to move, I guess you just need to raise the rent, amen? Many of the former “free-spirits” moved down the coast of California to Santa Cruz where they settled down and had children. As you can imagine, they didn’t give their children regular names … like Melissa or Bret. Oh, no. The people in the mountains around Santa Cruz grew accustomed to their children playing hacky-sack and frisbee with “Moon Beam,” “Aquarius,” “Saffron,” and “Arlo.” Eventually Moon Beam and Aquarius and Saffron and Arlo began attending public school.
That’s when the kindergarten teachers first met little “Fruit Stand.” On the first day of school, the parents were required to stick a name tag on their children to help the teachers learn the names of their new students. The parents would pin name tags on their little Meadow and Ziggy, kiss them good-bye, and then send them off to school on the bus for their first day of school. So it was for little “Fruit Stand.”
Although the teachers were used to some pretty unusual names, they found Fruit Stand’s name a bit odd … but they did their best to help Fruit Stand feel comfortable and fit in. “Would you like to play with the blocks, Fruit Stand?” they offered. “Maybe you would like a snack, Fruit Stand?” By the end of the day, his name didn’t seem any stranger than “Sunflower” or “Purple Haze.”
At dismissal time, the teachers led the children out to the buses. “Fruit Stand,” one of the teachers asked, “do you know which one is your bus?” He didn’t answer … which wasn’t strange because Fruit Stand hadn’t answered them all day. Lots of children are shy the first day of school, so the teachers didn’t really give it much thought.
The parents were not only required to pin a name tag on their children, they were also supposed to write the name of the child’s bus stop on the reverse side of their name tags. When Fruit Stand didn’t answer, the teacher flipped over Fruit Stand’s name tag and looked on the back … where she saw the word “Anthony.” As my little story of “Fruit Stand” demonstrates, names are really important … a name can make a difference, amen?
Several centuries before Christ came into our world, Alexander the Great came out of Macedonia and Greece to conquer the Mediterranean world. On one particular campaign, Alexander received word that one of his officers was continuously and seriously misbehaving. The soldier’s character was, in fact, becoming a stain on the reputation of the Grecian army. Alexander the Great summoned the officer to his tent. Upon the officer’s arrival, his commander, Alexander, asked him what his name was. “Alexander, Sir,” was the officer’s reply. Alexander the Great looked him in the eye and with a stern voice said: “Well, then … either change your behavior or change your name” (www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations).
God is like a diamond with an infinite number of facets. His many names are like windows that reveal His beautiful and amazing character and nature.
Elohim – Creator
Adonai – King of kings and Lord of Lords
Yahweh – Eternal and Ever-Changing
Jehovah Jireh – Our Everlasting Provider
Jehovah Shammah – The One Who is Always There
Jehovah Rapha – The One Who Heals or Repairs
Jehovah Sabaoth – The LORD of Hosts
Today we are going be learning a new name and get another glimpse into the greatness and beauty and majesty of our God. It’s “El Shaddai.”
It’s funny because most of you have probably heard that name … it’s the title of a song written by Michael Card and John Thompson and made famous by many great Christian artists like Amy Grant and Sandi Patty. In fact, it’s on page 123 of The United Methodist Hymnal and we’re going to sing it at the end of our worship service. “El Shaddai” … you’ve probably heard of the song … sung it or listened it to more than a few times … but what does the name “El Shaddai” actually mean?
Well … by now you know what the word “El” means, right? It’s the generic name for “God.” “El” speaks of God’s power … His ability to create and to sustain what He created. But “shaddai”? “Shaddai” is another one of those delightfully and divinely ambiguous words that I find so fascinating … like the names “Elohim” and “Adonai.” Scholars cannot agree on what the word “shaddai” means. It could mean “huge” and “mighty” because the word means “mountain.” Mountains are huge, impressive, amen? Mountains are mighty, right? “El Shaddai” … “God Mountain” … which could be interpreted to mean “God, the Mighty Mountain” or “God is a Mighty Mountain.” I don’t think that we should have any trouble calling God “El Shaddai” … the “Mighty Mountain,” am I right?
But … hold on a minute.
The root of the “shaddai” is “shad” which is the Hebrew word for a woman’s “breast.” Now … we’re all adults here so I think you can handle what I’m about to say. If you look at the shape of a woman’s breast and you look at the shape of most mountains, I think that you could agree that it’s a pretty fair comparison or analogy, am I right?
A mountain represents something huge, mighty, and solid … but a woman’s breast, especially the breasts of a mother, represent nurture … they represent safety … they represent love and warmth. A newborn baby find everything it needs to survive at his or her mother’s breasts. When a child is frightened, he or she runs to their mother and finds safety and protection in her arms … just as we find love and warmth, safety and comfort in God’s arms. For those of you raised here in the mountains, these hills can represent some of the same things, amen? A mountain provides a shelter for your home. It provides food. A place where generations of your family may have been born and raised and buried.
I love the contrast and tension inherent in the name “El Shaddai.” God is our mountain … our strength … huge … powerful … immovable … ancient. That same God is as loving and as caring and as nurturing as a mother on whom we depend for life and sustenance.
All this makes it hard to translate “El Shaddai.” Some scholars have tried to push all these terms and meanings together. For example, some scholars have interpreted “El Shaddai” as “The One Mighty to Nourish and Satisfy.” Others translate “El Shaddai” to mean simply “Mighty and Powerful One” which leaves out the whole nurturing and caring part of the name. For the sake of translation and discussion, the ancient rabbis agreed that the name “El Shaddai” means “All-Sufficient and Mighty One” … which, over time, has simply been translated as “Almighty.”
There is a tension in the name “Almighty.” “Almighty” is actually the combination or joining of two words … “all” and “mighty.” Think about that for a moment. God is “all” … a-l-l … “mighty” … in other words, He is mighty in all things … He is mighty in every way. He is “mighty” like a mountain … and He is “mighty” like the care and love of a mother. “El Shaddai” … is a beautifully descriptive name for our all-powerful and all-sufficient God who can do anything and meet any need … and it is, once again, our good friend Abram and his wife, Sarai, who are going to help us explore and learn more about the meaning and power inherent in the name of “El Shaddai.”
When Abram was 75 years old, God told him to leave his country … leave his people … leave his father’s household … all that was dear and familiar to him … and go to a new land … a foreign land … that God would show him. And to reassure them that God would keep His promise to them, God entered into a covenant with Abram and Sarai:
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3).
I want you to notice something very important about God’s covenant with Abram and Sarai. El Shaddai doesn’t promise Abram that He will make Abram a great nation if Abram does a, b, and c … and El Shaddai doesn’t promise to make Abram and Sarai a great nation and a blessing to all nations if Sarai does x, y, and z. The only conditions in the covenant are the ones that God puts on Himself. Did you ever notice that? He says “I” will make all these things come to pass … and then takes on all the burden and responsibility of making it happen.
Now … 75 years old may seem old to us but in Abram’s day it wasn’t that old. Abram’s father lived to be 205 years old and Abram himself lived to be 175 years old … so at this point in his life he still has another 100 years to go. At 75, Abram’s just reaching his prime … he’s not even middle-aged yet.
We humans have skeptical minds and restless hearts, don’t we? After waiting 10 years for God to keep His promise, Abram and Sarai are getting impatient. After all, they’re not getting any younger. Abram’s now 85 years old … getting past middle age … so they take matters into their own hands rather than wait any longer on God. Abram and Sarai decide to produce an heir through Sarai’s Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar.
Hagar produces a son … Ishmael … but things don’t turn out as expected, do they? Their solution doesn’t produce peace or joy or happiness … it produces jealousy and bitterness and disharmony. The Bible says that Hagar looked with contempt on Sarai because Sarai couldn’t conceive (Genesis 16:4) and Sarai treated her very harshly in return (v. 6).
Imagine, if you will, what life must have been like for Abram and Sarai and Hagar and Ishmael for the next 13 or 14 years. The women hated each other and were constantly at each other’s throats … both of them constantly complaining to Abram … who probably spent more and more time away from home tending his sheep. Add to this a rambunctious child that even God said would be a “wild ass of a man” (Genesis 16:12). Put it all together and you’ve got 13 to 14 years of dysfunction, bitterness, anger, jealousy, contempt, envy, and outright rebellion … 13 or 14 years of living with the consequences of taking matters into their own hands.
And during all this time, God is silent. I’m sure that Abram and Sarai prayed many times and wondered on more than one occasion where God was … why He was so silent … why He didn’t do something to answer their prayers and alleviate their suffering.
By chapter 17, Abram is now 99 years old. He and Sarai have been waiting for God to keep His promise for 24 years. Twenty-four years! Have any of you ever waited 24 years for something? What would that have been like for Sarai and Abram? I’m sure that they were wondering what was going on. Was God pulling their leg? Taking them for a ride? Could this “YHWH” be trusted? If God is Jehovah Jireh, when’s He gonna “jireh” … “provide” … them with a son? It had reached the point long ago where having a child was physiologically impossible for them … but what God wanted them … and us … to realize is that nothing is impossible for Him, amen?
Are you doubting that Jehovah Jireh is able to take care of all your needs? Does your situation look hopeless … impossible? Does it seem like God is, well, not to be trusted or doesn’t care? We can be old and barren like Abram and Sarai … not in the child-bearing sense … but barren in the sense that we’ve exhausted all of our resources … we’ve tried everything and nothing worked … we’re at our wit’s end … we’ve got nothing left to go on … lucky if we’ve got a few drops of hope left.
What is usually our darkest hour is God’s moment to shine. God breaks into Abram’s and Sarai’s life … into their hopelessness and despair … and reveals another name … another aspect … another dimension of Himself. Up until now, Abram has only known God as “YHWH” … the unutterable name of God. Now God shares a new name with Abram … “El Shaddai.” In the midst of Abram’s circumstances … at the very moment that Abram and Sarai are experiencing their greatest despair … God gives them hope. God chooses this moment to reveal Himself as the “All-Mighty” … the “All-Sufficient” One who can do anything and meet any need.
In essence, El Shaddai says to Abram: “You’ve been living with the consequences and inadequacy of your own efforts for 14 years now … have you had enough yet? It’s time that you learn a new thing about me, El Shaddai. You have discovered by sad experience what your futile plans and efforts can produce without me … what have you accomplished? What have you acquired? Your house … your family … is full of strife and jealousy. Now it’s time for you to learn how capable I am to do everything that I desire to do … whenever I desire to do it.”
How WE … you and I today … need to discover or rediscover this truth, amen? We need desperately to recover and to experience the reality of “El Shaddai” … the God who is sufficient for whatever we are going through today … right now … in our lives.
“I am El Shaddai,” God tells Abram, “walk before me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). And to help Abram and Sarai walk before Him with confidence and assurance, He lets them know that He hasn’t forgotten the covenant that He made with them 14 years ago: “And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous (v. 2). I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God” (v. 6-8).
After God reminded Abram of who He was … El Shaddai … He then told Abram exactly what He was going to do. Five times El Shaddai said “I will” … “I will do this” … “I will do that.” Again, we don’t hear God saying, “I will establish a never-ending covenant with you … I will make you fruitful … if you will do … [blank]”. Over and over again, God declares that He will make these things happen … and more … but they will happen when He … El Shaddai … makes them happen … and not a minute or a second sooner.
El Shaddai. He is the One … with a capital “O” … who comes from Heaven and does the courting … He is the One … with a capital “O” … who established the relationship … He is the One who establishes the covenant … who lays down the rules for it. This is not the story of a man coming to God … this is the story of God coming to a man.
God … El Shaddai … doesn’t ask Abram to climb up the mountain to Him. El Shaddai … the mountain … comes down to him and establishes a relationship with Abram and says, “This is what I, El Shaddai, God All-Mighty, is going to do for you!” It puts the focus on the All-Sufficient God and what HE will do ... not on what WE can or will do.
That’s the way that God works. That’s the God I take comfort in. God doesn’t ask me to climb a mountain before He’ll come to me. El Shaddai … the Mountain of Heaven … comes to me. As old and as weak and sinful as we may be … He seeks a relationship with us. He uses His power to come to us through His Son, Jesus Christ … through His Word … through the fellowship of the body of Christ … through baptism … and through Communion.
El Shaddai … God All-Mighty … God All-Sufficient. When God reveals Himself to us, we are changed. We can NEVER encounter God and remain unchanged. Abram and Sarai were changed through their encounter with El Shaddai, so God gave them new names to reflect that change. In verse 5, God tells Abram: “No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Did you hear it? “… for I, El Shaddai, God All-Mighty, have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” There is a great deal of significance to the name “Abraham.” While it is frequently translated as “Father of Multitudes” it also means “Their Strength” or “Their Protection.” Abraham will not only be the father of multitudes, but he and his ancestors will become leaders and kings whose strength and leadership will guide and protect the nation of Israel.
“As for Sarai, your wife,” says God: “you will not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
The name “Abram” means “exalted father.” How embarrassing that name must have been for him. Every time that he ran into a merchant or a vendor or a stranger and they asked him what his name was, he’d have to say … “Abram” … “Exalted Father” … and I would guess that the same joking questions would come up: “So … ‘Exalted Father’ … how many children do you have?” Followed by “… and do they ‘exalt’ you?” For 86 years, Abram, “Exalted Father,” would have to answer that question over and over with …”none.” I can only imagine what these merchants or strangers were thinking … and I’m sure Abram was too: ‘“Abram’ … ha! Some ‘exalted’ father! How can you be an ‘exalted’ father if you don’t have any children? What a stupid name for a man who has no children … bah!” Think about it. Every time that someone called out his name or spoke his name … be it family, friends, or stranger … Abram … the “Exalted Father” … would be reminded of the painful irony of that name.
Imagine going through life with the name “Contentious.” That’s what Sarai’s name meant … “She Who Strives” … or “Contentious” for short. I’m sure that the rumor mill around Canaan was going strong … grinding out gossip about “Contentious” and why she was barren. Unfortunately, we can sometimes live up to our names, can’t we? We know from her experience with Hagar and Ishmael that Sarai could indeed be very “contentious.” When she gets impatient with God, she strives to get an heir by ordering her Egyptian servant girl, Hagar, to sleep with her husband. When Hagar obeys and bears Abram a son, Sarai becomes jealous and vindictive and asks Abram to run Hagar and her son, Ishmael, out of the camp and into the wilderness … not the least bit concerned about whether they can survive in the desert or not. That’s, uh, pretty “contentious,” don’t you think?
God changed Sarai’s name to “Sarah” … which means “princess.” The Hebrew root of her name is also the Hebrew root for the word or name “Israel” … appropriate, given God’s promise that “she shall give rise to nations” and kings shall come from her (Genesis 17:16).
Both names, Abraham and Sarah, are evidence of what God was doing in their lives. “Abram … “Exalted Father,” says God, “for years you have been trying to exalt yourself … and now I am going to do my work in you and you will be exalted as the father of a great nation because of me. Sarai … all your life you have tried to struggle through life on your own strength and power and all you have done is create strife and that has made you bitter. But, with my strength and encouragement, you will be remembered as a princess … the mother of a nation that will produce great kings. You will live up to your names … Abraham and Sarah … because I lived up to my name … El Shaddai … All-Mighty and All-Sufficient. You are now ready to bear fruit and receive the promises that I made to you.”
Like Abraham and Sarah, we change when we learn about who God is. Perhaps our “names” are not changed but we do get a new name … “Christian” … as a sign that our lives have changed and continue to change as we grow in our understanding of God and His Son, Jesus, and His Holy Spirit. As we learn about who God is we find our strength in what HE can do and not in what we can do. As we learn about who God is, we find that the very weakness that we thought would be our undoing is actually what God will use to build His kingdom. Jesus comes to us and He calls us by name and He says, “I am ready to complete in you the work that I began.”
When the Messiah was born, the prophet Isaiah said that He would be called: Wonderful Counselor … El Shaddai, All-Mighty and All-Sufficient … Everlasting Father … Prince of Peace. Jesus is El Shaddai … the All-Mighty … mighty over sickness … mighty over demons … mighty over the wind and the waves … mighty over death itself. Jesus is El Shaddai … the All-Sufficient One … the source and provider of all that we need or will ever need … love, warmth, comfort, safety, grace, forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.
On the night that He was sharing His last meal with His disciples, Jesus took a loaf of bread [take the bread] … He gave thanks to His Father in Heaven … He broke the bread [break the bread] … and passed it to His disciples, saying: “Take, eat … this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
When the meal was over, Jesus took a cup of wine [hold up chalice] … He gave thanks to His Father in Heaven … and passed it to His disciples, saying: “Take and drink from this all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”
Jesus calls us to remember El Shaddai … the mountain of God that became a man. Every time that we gather and break bread and eat together … every time that we gather to feast upon His Word … every time that we gather to worship, to nourish and restore our bodies and our souls … we are to remember Jesus, El Shaddai … the All-Mighty, All-Powerful, All-Sufficient One who can do anything and meet any need … who nourishes and strengthens us with His Word … with His Presence … with His Holy Spirit.
Maybe God has been “up there” [point up] or “out there” [point off into the distance] … far removed from you and your circumstances and you’ve never encountered the God who is right here [point to Communion table, all around]. Listen. Jesus is calling you now … by name. It took 14 years for Abraham and Sarah to realize the hopelessness of living on their own power … how long will it take you?
Let us pray …
