Good morning. I have an announcement to make first. So if I go over time, it's not because I was long-winded speaking, it's because the announcements were long. The, um, young people's meeting was changed from the time in the bulletin next week to the following week because the end was taken next week, and we've been trying to have the meetings up there. When Jeff and I talked about on the phone, Jeff said, I know I made it two weeks in a row instead of every other week like usual for some reason, but I can't remember what it is. And I said, well, I can't remember either. Then this morning, when Norm gave announcements, we remembered why. It was on that night. What we're going to try and do now is to have young peoples in the afternoon on March first, preceded perhaps by a sledding party if there's some snow, and um, then we'll be able to go to the missionary meeting too, and there won't be a conflict. So that is a change in the peoples. Open your Bibles, please, to Matthew chapter seven. Brother Mazlan asked me this morning if, uh, I had anything in particular I wanted him to read. I said no, and he said, well, I'm gonna read in Luke 7, and I said, well. Sounds familiar. But it was Matthew Seven that I was thinking about. Last time we were together, we started to consider the subject of fruit bearing, some of the things that are necessary in order for us to be able to bear fruit. The first thing that we considered last time was the fact that we had to be a part of the living vine in order to bear fruit. If there is any hope of life, one has to be attached to that living vine. There are two vines in this world. And one is living, and one is dying. And every person that's in this world is attached to either one or the other. At a home back on Long Island, we had a brick chimney on the side of our house. Used to have ivy growing up the chimney, and when it got to about the top, my father would get up there with a ladder and pull the ivy down. And we never had a ladder that would reach to the top of the chimney, so he'd cut the ivy off as far up as he could reach. And that ivy would not immediately turn brown and wilt and fall off. It would take a while for that ivy to die, even though it had been severed from the root. And that's the same as the dying vine that's in this world. The tap root of that vine was cut at Calvary. Satan defeated, was defeated at Calvary. And the Lord Jesus said, you can either be of your father, the devil, or you can be of my father, and who's the father of life. So we can either be grafted into the living vine, or else we can be a part of that dead vine. The dead vine has been cut already, even though at the very tip it still continues to live. It's in the process of dying. And everyone here this morning is a part of either one vine or the other. And the Lord Jesus says here in Matthew chapter seven that it's easy to tell what vine you're attached to. He knows each and every one of us. He knows which one we're attached to. But he says in verse seventeen, even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a contr- corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth forth, that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. So the first thing that we had considered last time we were together was the fact that we had to be attached to the living vine if we wanted to be able to bear living fruit. The second thing that we discussed was the fact that we needed to have a desire to bear fruit. That our life had to be aerodynamically designed. We had to funnel all the desires of our life into one thing, one chief desire. We all have a chief desire in life if we dig deep enough. Some it is to make money, some it is to make a name, some of it, some people have a desire to establish for their generations to come an inheritance. Every one of us has some sort of motivating goal. We looked last time at David, whose desire was to spend his time in God's presence, and he united everything in his life behind that one goal. So we not only had to be a part of the living vine, but we had to have a desire to bear fruit. And the third thing was that we had to be clean, we had to be purged. John fifteen tells us that the Father purgeth the vines that bear fruit, and that word purge means to clean. It also gives the idea of pruning. Three things that we could consider as our part in bearing fruit. Yesterday at the board meeting, uh, part of the devotion was spent considering the fact that we had to have a balance in our prayer life. That word balance is perhaps the key word in the Christian life. I don't know if there is, is any other word that sums up more of what the Christian life needs to consist of than that word balance. And there's a balance in fruit bearing too, and that's what I'd like to consider with you this morning as far as our background is concerned. Last time we considered the parts that we had to do. This morning I'd like to consider the part that God does. Because there's a balance. We can't bear fruit on our own. We have to have God's help to bear fruit. We can't ba- we cannot bear fruit without his energy. We can't bear fruit without his nourishment. God is not only our source of life, but he's also our source of energy and our ability to bear fruit. He says, apart from me, you can do nothing. The portion I'd like to consider with you concerning this is the seventeenth chapter of the book of Genesis. And when Abraham- Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am Almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect, and I will make my covenant between me and thee, and I will multiply thee exceedingly. Now, just for a moment, I'd like to consider some of the background of what led up to this appearance of God before Abraham, or to Abraham. Back in chapter twelve is the first time God promises to Abraham to make him exceeding, uh, to multiply him exceedingly. He says to Abraham in verse one of chapter... said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, into a land that I will show thee, and I will make thee, of thee a great nation. And I will bless thee and make thy name great. That was his first promise to Abraham. Then, over in chapter 15, Abraham Abraham gets gets to this promised land that Ab- that, uh, God talks about. He a- he let him out of a land in chapter 12 of his father, and we read in verse thir- in chapter Chocolate and verse 12 that Abraham dwelled in the land of Canaan. He had arrived where God had promised to take him. And after he had been in Canaan a little while, he began to wonder about this promise that God had made to him when he was back in his father's land. And so in chapter camera, Abram says, Abram says to the Lord in verse 2, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless? And the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my house is mine heir. Behold, the w- the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and he said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. And he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And Abram believed in the Lord, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Abram was somewhere past the age of seventy five when this happened. We read in chapter sixteen, when he was eighty five years old, that he had been in the land of Canaan for ten years. So sometime between seventy five and eighty five, this event that we just read took place. Abraham was past the point of being able to bear fruit, as far as the world is concerned. And so he said to the Lord, he said, maybe I should have my servant bear me a son, because the custom of the day was that anybody who was born a slave belonged to his master, not to his real father. And God said, no, Abraham, your seed is going to come from you. We read that it was counted unto Abraham for righteousness because he believed God's word. God, Abraham attempted to help God in his promise of to make Abraham fruitful, but God said, I don't need your help, Abraham. You're going to be the father, just like I promised you. Then we go to chapter fifteen— uh, sixteen, sorry. What happens is, after a little while, there's still no son. So Sarah, his wife, says to Abram, if God's made you the promise that the son is going to come from you, and we still haven't had a son, then it must be because I'm barren. So if you take my handmaid and you marry her, and she isn't barren, and God says the seed is going to come from you, then you'll be fruitful as God has promised. This time, instead of Abraham going to God and checking it out with him first, he just went ahead and did that. He married Hagar, and sure enough, he had a son. But that wasn't God's way either. That wasn't in God's plan for Abram. Twice, Abraham tried, Abram at this point, tried to bear fruit on his own. And twice he failed. Without God, we cannot bear fruit. Abraham was a clean vessel. Abraham had a desire to do what God wanted him to do, but that was not enough. He needed strength and he needed power from God in order to bear fruit. He couldn't do it on his own. Two times he tried. Once God stopped him before he made a mistake. The second time he made a mistake, and his heirs, his one line of descendants, have paid dearly for that mistake ever since. There's an age-old adage that goes like this: God's work must be gone- done God's way in God's time. We can do God's work, but we have to do it God's way. And even if we do it God's way, we have to do it in God's time. Those three things have to be balanced, or else it leads to failure. So that brings us to chapter seventeen, and it's been a long time since scripture has recorded any conversation between God and Abraham. The last time we have any record of God speaking to Abraham is in back when he spoke about Eliezer. And then there's a s- a thirteen-year silence about anything about Abraham at all after the last mistake that he made. And then God appears before him in chapter seventeen. And he appears before him, and he says, I am Almighty God. The Hebrew for that word is El Shaddai. That's the way the Jewish people pronounce it. Strong's Concordance points out that it should be El Shaddai. Uh, you can take your pick. I don't know which is right. But he says to Abraham in verse one, he says, I am El Shaddai. Walk before me and be thou c- perfect or complete. The first thing he wanted Abraham to do was walk before him. In order to walk before God, we have to be clean. We have to be ready and fit for his use. We're told that God is light, and that light exposes any faults, any problems, any sin in our life. And so if we walk before him in that light, it exposes all the shortcomings that we have. It gives us an opportunity to confess our shortcomings, but it also gives us a realization that we have to lean heavily on God in order to accomplish anything. And so he tells Abraham, first of all, that he's to walk before him. It takes desire, it takes cleanliness, it takes our part, a decision on our part to walk before him. But it's God that gives the fruit. So he says to Abraham, be thou perfect, or be complete. There's a lot of things that we can learn from what he meant there, but I think in the context of what he's saying is, Abraham, now it's time for me to make my promise to you complete. If you walk before me now, now is the time that I am going to bring my promise to you to pass. You see, it was God's work. It had to be done God's way, and for Abraham, now it was God's time to be complete. And so he introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai. I want to look for just a quick moment at some of the other times he's mentioned in this capacity in the Old Testament. First, in the twenty eighth chapter of the book of Genesis. In the first verse of the twenty eighth chapter, we read, Isaac called Jacob. This is a conversation that takes place between Isaac and Jacob, and Isaac tells Jacob, in verse three, El Shaddai bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed would be. Now over to the thirty fifth chapter in the, in the uh ninth verse, we read that God appeared to Jacob. First it was Isaac appearing to Jacob, and now God appears to Jacob after he came out of Pandan Ra- Aram, and he says to him in verse eleven, God said unto him, I am El Shaddai. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins. And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give thee the land. Chapter forty nine. Jacob's reaching the end of his life, and he calls his sons together to give them a blessing. And his blessing to Joseph be- begins in verse twenty two, and he says, Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well. Verse twenty five, he says, even by the God of thy father, who shall keep thee, and by El Shaddai, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breast and of the womb. The last one is in the book of Ruth. The first chapter. Naomi is c- is coming back to Bethlehem. And when she comes back to Bethlehem after going out from Bethlehem when there was a famine, she went out with two sons and a husband. And when she comes back, in verse, um, 19, it came to pass when they were come to Bethlehem that all the city was moved about them, and they said, is this Naomi? And she said unto them, call me not Naomi, which means pleasant, but call me Mara, which means bitter, for the Almighty, Shaddai, hath dealt bitterly, very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty. Why then call me, ye me, Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and Shaddai hath afflicted me. When she says she went out full, she meant she went out with two sons. She had been fruitful. She came back empty, no sons. Every single one of the occasions that we've read here, the name El Shaddai is directly related with the subject of fruitfulness, with bearing fruit. Without God, it's impossible to bear fruit. And to those patriarchs of old, he even had a name connected with this, and that was El Shaddai. Last week we were reading about his appearing to Moses. If you turn over to the sixth chapter of the book of Exodus, we read about something that God says to Moses. In E- in Exodus chapter six in verse two we read, and God spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, unto Jacob by the name El Shaddai. But by my name Jehovah was I not known to them. I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan. Verse eight. Uh, for context, I just read the first, uh, phrase of verse six. wherefore say unto the children of Israel, then down, um, in verse, no, I might as well read from se- uh, the whole thing. In verse six, wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments. I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God. And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land concerning which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. And I will give it to you for an heritage. I am Jehovah. To Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, he was known as El Shaddai. He had promised to them to make them a great nation. He appears years later to Moses, and he appears as Jehovah. You see, his promise for fruitfulness was well on its way. The nation of Israel was now two or three million people strong, and God's promise had come true. But he said to Moses, he says, as you lead them out of Egypt, he says, to them I'll be known as Jehovah. Jehovah means I was, I will be, I am. You see, he knew that the Israelites were going to have to look back and remember what God had done for them. He knew that they were going to have to look forward to the promises that he had given to them. And in light of those two things, they were going to have to live today knowing that he is God. So to them, he was Jehovah. Very similar to you and I today. We gathered around a table of remembrance this morning. We looked backwards to what he did at Calvary, but we were ma- reminded and pointed forward to what he's going to do one day to come. God is Jehovah. But to the children of Israel, or or to Abraham, he was El Shaddai. There's two schools of thought as to what Shaddai means. And I don't have any grasp of the Hebrew language, so I can't make a decision as to which is right. It almost seems to me that God has clouded the origin of this word, because both definitions to me make sense. The first school of thought says that it comes from a word that means, that, that is shodad, and it means all powerful, almighty, the strongest. Because God is an infinite God, his power is unsurpassable. In the world of athletics today, there's such thing as world championships. And if a team or an individual repeats as a world champion for a couple of years in a row, they start to use the word dynasty in relation to this team or this, uh, group of individuals. God, when it comes to power, has had a dynasty for an eternity past. There's never been one that's been able to defeat him in his power, in his strength. And this is the, the meaning of this Hebrew word. Almighty, unbeatable, undefeatable. And so some say that this is the word that El Shaddai comes from. It definitely fits the subject of fruit bearing, because through his power, regardless of the circumstances, you and I are able to bear fruit, because he is all powerful. In the forty-third chapter of Genesis, Jacob sends his sons back to a man in E- in Egypt that he doesn't know about, and doesn't realize is his son. But when he sends him forth, he says to them that as they go forth, El Shaddai will keep them. And here the sense is that the power of the Almighty will guard them as they go back to Egypt. Job uses the word Shaddai some thirty one times, and it seems that the, the implication of the word in that book is the strength of God. Over and over again, Job is looking back to the power of God. You turn to the, the book of the Revelation, and the Lord Jesus Christ is introduced as he that was, that is, that is to come. The Hebrew meaning Jehovah. He's also introduced as the Almighty God, all powerful. There could be a connection here, and that power is definitely what's needed to bear fruit. So this could be the translation of the word El Shaddai. The second translate, the second school of thought pictures God completely different, but it's a beautiful picture. The root word for this school of thought says that the word is Shad or Shod, that Shaddai came from. And the word shad or shod means breast in Hebrew, and the idea is the breasted one. And the implication is of a nursing mother. And all that an, an infant child needs to grow is the nourishment from the mother. And the name here is not Almighty, but all sufficient. And when it comes to bearing fruit, you and I can bear fruit when God supplies the nourishment, when he is all sufficient to us. So whether he is almighty and all powerful and given us the energy to bear fruit, or whether he is the nourisher, the life giver, the provider, the all sufficient one, it's through him and only through him that you and I can bear fruit. We must walk we m- before him. We must have faith in him. We must have a desire to please him. But we have to balance that by knowing that El Shaddai will supply the energy, will supply the nourishment we need to bear fruit for him. As we mentioned before, Abraham attempted twice to speed things up, to help God. And because of that, there was failure. The balance, my desire, cannot outweigh God's help, God's energy, God's supplying. There's one final thought, though, that I'd like to consider with you back in the first chapter of Ruth, before we leave this. And that is that what we consider fruit is not always what God considers fruit. We read about Naomi coming back to Bethlehem, and she came back empty, and she said, Shaddai has dealt bitterly with me. He's taken away my fruit. He's left me empty. Naomi thought that she went out full. But as we, through history, look back, we see that what God was doing was pruning. And pruning can be very painful. But what happened was Naomi was moved into the very lineage of King David. She became his great-great-grandmother. And that put her in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. She thought that God was de- dealing harshly with her. She thought that God was taking away his, her fruit. But what God was doing was pruning. What God was doing was purging. What God was doing was taking a vine that bore fruit and trimming it back so that it could bear fruit abundantly. And he does that with you and me. He does the same thing. He takes us and he prunes us. And sometimes the knife is sharp. But when the pruning is done, we can bear fruit abundantly. God never prunes without a purpose. And it is always for our good. Even if we don't see it, or even if we don't understand it. Naomi had no idea what was taking place in her life. But the fact was that God was pruning her so that she could be, bring forth fruit and bring it forth abundantly. As we close, I'd like to first talk to anybody who might be here that has not yet been grafted into that living vine. You're still part of that vine that has already been hewn down, and which one... I was 5 or 6 years old, my mother tried to get us all to learn a little calm. She offered us a big reward. I forget what the reward was now. But all of my sisters and I were given a chance to learn this poem, and the first one to learn it was gonna get a prize. Unfortunately, my last name isn't Kelly, and my s- one of my sisters is, and she won the prize, but the poem goes like this. I cannot do great things for For him, him. Who but did did so much for me. But I would like to show my love, Lord Jesus, unto thee. And so I ask that you give me grace, my little place to fill. But I may ever walk with me, and always do that well. You and I, in some small way can actually bring glory to the god of the universe by bearing fruit. Only Only one. one life will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last. We have to work while it is yet day, because the night cometh when no man can work. I have only just a minute. Only are seconds in it. I didn't seek it. I didn't choose it. Forced upon me. I can't refuse it. But it's up to me to use it. I will suffer if I lose it. Give a count if I abuse it. Just a little tiny minute, but eternity is in it. So often we remind those that are not saying that the time is short. But the time is just as short for you and I. Well, Why in no all that medlons Lord say. here? We have no guarantee just like the sun. How long we have the privilege of knowing him as those who die, and he has a desire to make us fruitful. He He has has the a ability door in to the make middle us. room. And he's given us this man to do. I I have have a whole only just a minute. Only 60 seconds in it. I didn't seek it. I didn't choose it. But it's up to me to use it. I will suffer if I lose it. Give a count if I abuse it. Just a little tiny minute, but eternity is Reason. in it. I'll do my bare foot for him and bear the bundle to his honor, to his glory. So has power. So has nourishment. Has the Almighty all sufficient Yes, Father. power. Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee, Father, for the privilege which is ours to actually serve thee in some small way. We think of those that might be here today that are yet outside of Christ, and Father, we pray that they would come to a knowledge of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ before it's too young and way too late. And Father, for us that have the privilege of knowing him as Father, as Almighty God, as all-sufficient one, we pray that we would have a desire to serve thee in such a way that we would bring honor and glory to thy name, that we would bear fruit for thee, and one last holy trinity. We thank thee again for the blessings of the day, for thy goodness and mercy, Jesus. We thank thee most of all for the Lord Jesus Christ. So in his name we pray. Amen.