These are fearful days - a woman on trial for killing her children - a boy on trial for killing his mother - a woman teacher charged with having sex with her 13-year-old student! North Korea threatening to bomb us - a kind young social worker murdered - a little baby, while just sitting in his stroller, killed by two teenagers - Christians in Egypt being systematically killed!
Is there any end to it all?(Well, yes, actually there will be an end to it... Just maybe not today - or maybe today!)
It reminds me of Habakkuk's cries out to God asking Him to pay more attention to what is happening.
How long must I cry for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, 'Violence,' but you do not save...
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife and conflict abound.
Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteousness so that justice is perverted...
-- Habakkuk 1:2-4
Is anyone really in charge? Is everything happening just random acts of meaningless chance?
The Bible teaches very clearly a different view.
Nothing happens by chance.
Nothing catches Him by surprise. He cannot be blind-sided.
Nothing happens in the story of history that does not follow the story line He already planned out.
Nothing flows in the current of history that does not fall in the channel He has already dug for it.
There is no "surprise ending."
What is His Name - the Name above all Names?
El Elyon. The Most High God.
God declared many names for Himself in Scripture.
This one, El Elyon, occurs just twice: in Genesis and Isaiah. "El" translates "God" (Elohim is the plural) and "Elyon" is "Most High."
First in Genesis 14. You remember the story. Abraham's nephew, Lot, has been captured in a war with the Canaanite kings.
Abraham went out to rescue Lot and on his return home he met that mysterious figure, Melchizedek, who, we are told, was king of Salem and priest of God Most High (El Elyon).
Clearly He speaks for God when he says:
Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven
and earth, and blessed be God Most High who has delivered
your enemies into your hand. (Genesis 14:19)
Abram had accomplished the humanly-impossible task of freeing his nephew from the hands of the nine powerful kings because he had El Elyon (the possessor of heaven and earth) on his side.
Second, look at Isaiah 14, another place where El Elyon is used to identify our God.
It's the section where it seems to describe Satan's (Lucifer's) fall from heaven. Satan voices 5 "I will" statements:
- I will ascend to heaven
- I will raise my throne
- I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly
- I will ascend above the tops of the clouds
- I will make myself like the Most High.
Satan is acknowledging that our God is the God Most High. I will make myself like the Most High - the ultimate expression of pride.
(Remember Christ's words, 'Not my will but thine be done'? Sometimes God finally says to humankind, 'OK, not MY will, but yours be done, since that is what you want to desperately!' Maybe the saddest, most hopeless words He could ever utter to us.)
The single word Elyon (the Most High) also occurs in Scripture referring to God. In Daniel 4 we read about Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. When his sanity was restored he says:
Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified Him who lives forever.
...the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes....
His dominion is an eternal dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation. He does what He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth....Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven because everything He does is right and all His ways are just. And those who walk in pride He is able to humble.
(Everything He does is right....from the mouth of the pagan King! We can add him to our list of people who really knew God.)
El Elyon is the supreme Name for the God Most High. It defines His sovereignty - His control over all of human history, and the rightful sovereign over our life.
Have you made Him your King?
I know that the LORD is great, that our LORD is greater than all gods, the LORD does whatever pleases Him, in the heavens and on the earth.
--Psalm 135:5-6
Our God is in heaven and does whatever pleases Him.
--Psalm 115:3
The LORD Almighty has sworn, 'Surely, as I have planned, it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand.'
--Isaiah 24:14
'I am God and there is none like Me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come. My purpose will stand, and I do all that I please.'
--Isaiah 46:9-11
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