Tag Archives: Jehovah Shammah

YAHWEH SHAMMAH – THE LORD IS THERE

Christian Life, ,

YAHWEH SHAMMAH – THE LORD IS THERE

God revealed Himself to His people through His names, symbolizing who He was in their human experiences. To Abraham He was Yahweh Jireh, the God who provides, to Gideon, Yahweh Shalom, the Lord is Peace and to David, Yahweh Rohi, the Lord his Shepherd, but to His redeemed people He would be Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is There. This is one of the most beautiful of His names because it expresses the greatest desire of His heart.

From Ezekiel 40 to 48, the prophet was taken in the spirit to see Jerusalem, which God is building for His people when He finally wraps everything up, destroys evil and restores His creation to its original purpose. Ezekiel watched as an angel measured the city and glimpsed its beauty and perfection.

God also told him the name of the city – Yahweh-Shammah.

The distance all around will be 18,000 cubits.
“And the name of the city from that time on will be:
THE LORD IS THERE. ” Ezekiel 48:35

Jerusalem was the capital city of Israel, symbolic of God’s people and His presence among them. The temple was in Jerusalem, the gathering place for the people to celebrate God’s feasts seven times a year, God’s goodness in providing for them, to anticipate the coming of their Messiah and to worship God with their sacrifices and offerings.

Jerusalem had taken a pounding from their enemies because of their idolatry and their social injustice and oppression of the poor. Ezekiel had seen God’s glory leave the temple, as though God were saying that He was finished with them (Ezekiel 8-10). In Isaiah 54:11-17 God comforts His people and reassures them that, after the devastation of war and exile, He would rebuild the city with jewels and precious stones instead of stones and bricks and that the city would be repopulated with restored families.

In Revelation 21, the city reappears, this time in all its splendor, its walls built of precious stones and its gates of pearls and shining with God’s glory. While John gazes on the beauty of the city he hears a voice saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them.” It’s almost as though God heaves a big sigh of relief because He has finally reached the goal He set out to achieve in Genesis 1:27, that He and mankind would live together in a perfect love-relationship forever.

John’s tour-guide angel also measured the city. Like Ezekiel’s city, the new Jerusalem is a perfect square. John explains that this city is actually the Lamb’s bride; strange symbolism but it tells us that God’s biggest dream will be fulfilled when Jesus finally marries us and we become one with Him forever. He will live in His people and we in Him in a perfect eternal union.

But God is also Yahweh Shammah now, the God who is there when we are lonely, when we are grieving, when we feel hopeless, when we need forgiveness, when we feel insecure or anxious or afraid. He is as close to us as the air we breathe. Jesus came to earth as Emmanuel, God with us and He promised to be with us always, even to the end of this age after which we will be with Him forever..

God’s Underground

Christian Life, , ,

GOD’S UNDERGROUND

“‘When they drag you into their meeting places, or into police courts or before judges, don’t worry about defending yourselves – what you’ll say or how you’ll say it. The right words will be there. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words when the time comes.”’ Luke 12:11-12 (The Message).

No matter how good an earthly father we might have (or have had), he cannot always be with us when we need him. Daddy is supposed to be his children’s protector but he is limited by his humanity. He has his own issues to contend with and fails us constantly because he is just like us and we are just like him, human, fallible and weak.

But the reality of our heavenly Father’s presence cannot be overstressed. When Jesus promised His disciples (and that includes us if we are serious followers of Jesus), ‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,’ (John 14:18), He was promising us that we have a Father who is unlike the very best of all earthly fathers.

The tragedy of many us, who believe and follow Jesus, is that we have not fully grasped the significance of Jesus’ promise. God is our Father and we are His sons and daughters. And the best of all is that Daddy will never leave us. It does not matter where, when or how we need Him, He is always with us, in fact even better; He is in us.

There is a word that does not exist in God’s vocabulary – the word ‘stress’. He has deleted it and replaced it with the word ‘rest’, and He promised that, when we live in His rest, He will fight our battles for us. He is available if we are ever put on trial for our faith in a court of law. However, for most of us that will not happen, but we are often on ‘trial’ in other situations where we need divine wisdom.

Jesus assures us, ‘You don’t need to think ahead. You have a divine ‘Underground’ who is with you and has gone before you, clearing the way and working on your behalf.’ Isn’t that an invitation to rest in God? This is non-negotiable. The Holy Spirit is in us; He is our advocate, answering through us, for us.

In this section of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 12:1-12), having exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, Jesus tenderly instructs His disciples with the truth. What is He trying to get His disciples to understand? Unlike the Pharisees who believed that they had to work hard to keep God’s attention and approval, Jesus was assuring His followers, ‘God is your Father. He is a perfect Father. You don’t have to perform to earn His love. He knows what it means to be a father.’

God places a far higher value in us than any of His other creation because He has invested His own life in us. He paid the ultimate price to redeem us from our self-inflicted slavery. He is determined to shape us into a perfect family of sons and daughters just like His Son and He’s always with us, on the job, patiently completing what He started.

So He says, ‘Will you trust me to do what I said I would do?’ Trying to negotiate life’s obstacles and issues on our own only delays the process. We might as well learn quickly that God can do a much better job guiding us through than we can. So, just trust Him. He is Jehovah Shammah – the God who is there!