An Introduction to God (The Names of God) #13: Jehovah Shammah, The Lord Is There

An Introduction to God is Dr. William P. Hohman’s series on the redemptive names of God, which he describes as God introducing Himself to mankind again after the fall. In this message he teaches on Jehovah Shammah, “the Lord is there,” from Ezekiel’s vision of the restored city. His point is simple and freeing: you never need to ask God where He is. He is a very present help in trouble, and He now lives in every believer. This message continues from An Introduction to God: The Names of God #9 — Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who Heals.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scripture behind each point (NKJV on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline and practical steps for this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was posted on February 20, 2024, and runs about 67 minutes. Pastor Hohman reads his main passages from the New Living Translation, and he closes by leading the church in a prayer to turn from idols and receive the fellowship God wants with each person.

Jehovah Shammah, he notes, is the last redemptive name of God revealed in the Old Testament, and the first name given to God in the New Testament is Emmanuel, God with us. The two belong together: the God who promised His presence to captives in Babylon came in person, and now dwells in His people.

An Introduction to God Through His Names

Pastor Hohman explains why he titled the series An Introduction to God rather than just the names of God. Adam knew God perfectly, but after the fall mankind was separated from Him, so God had to keep introducing Himself. Each name in the Old Testament shows His love, power and goodness, and that He is not only able but willing to help in every need.

Many Christians, he says, still do not know that God is willing to heal, deliver, provide and bless. God has a part and we have a part. Our part does not switch God on like a light. Faith without corresponding action is dead (James 2:17), and acting on what we know about Him opens our lives to let Him do what He needs to do.

Knowing God’s character also helps us accept our own. Pastor Hohman reminds the church of the earlier teaching on motivational gifts: each person has a God-given makeup. Some are ridiculed for the way they laugh, talk or think, and they back away from being who they are. The more we learn and embrace God’s character, he says, the more confident we become in the character He gave us.

He points to creation as proof that God loves variety. No two rivers, lakes or trees are alike, and nobody criticizes nature for its diversity. He is happily embracing who he is while trusting God to keep changing him over time.

He also challenges the idea that holiness means beating your breast at the altar and calling yourself a wretch. That, he says, is far from the truth. God wants you to know you are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) and the apple of His eye.

Jehovah Shammah: The Lord Is There

The name appears once, at the close of Ezekiel’s vision of the city of God in Ezekiel 48:30–35. The city has three gates on each wall, twelve gates in all, each named for a tribe of Israel: Reuben, Judah and Levi on the north; Joseph, Benjamin and Dan on the east; Simeon, Issachar and Zebulun on the south; Gad, Asher and Naphtali on the west. The NKJV ends, “the name of the city from that day shall be: THE LORD IS THERE.”

Pastor Hohman compares this earthly city with the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation 21:9–27, which he describes as about 1,500 miles on each side. There the angel shows John the city and calls it the bride, the Lamb’s wife. So when Scripture speaks of Jerusalem in this way, he teaches, it is really speaking about people.

The most common question among religious people, he says, is “God, where are you?” It rises in the emergency room, after a tragedy, when a job is lost, or when a situation feels too big to grasp. Ezekiel’s answer to Israel was the Lord is there. Israel had been carried into captivity and had lost its temple, and this name was given to bring them hope.

He corrects a common view of the prophets. Many preach that the prophets only rebuked people and warned of judgment. That is a truth, he says, but not the truth. The heart of every prophet’s message was God wanting to give His people hope, and Ezekiel’s promise of a city where the presence of God would dwell brought them consolation.

Psalm 46:1–3 says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Pastor Hohman stresses the word present. We are not trying to conjure God up or persuade Him to come down. Asking where God is means thinking like Israel in bondage, as if there is no hope. Because He is present, we will not fear, even though the earth be removed and the mountains shake.

He adds that the presence of God is the most desired experience of mankind throughout the ages. Even the most hardened opponent of God, when his life is on the line, will cry out for God to help him.

Hanging Up the Harps in Babylon

To show what Israel was feeling, Pastor Hohman reads from Psalm 137:1–6. By the rivers of Babylon they sat and wept when they remembered Zion. They hung their harps on the trees. When their captors asked for the songs of Zion, they refused: how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? They vowed that Jerusalem would be their highest joy.

Here, he says, is the real issue for anyone who wants to know Jehovah Shammah. Were they worshiping God or something that represented God to them? Jerusalem itself had become their god. When the temple was destroyed, they stopped having intimate time with God, clung to grief and stopped praising. By contrast, he notes, enslaved believers in earlier centuries kept singing songs of the Lord in their bondage.

He tells of a former denominational pastor whose wife asked him to visit. The man had backslidden badly and could not believe God was in heaven just demanding praise. Pastor Hohman told him God does not want praise for His own sake but for ours. His god had been the ministry, the work and the building, and praise was how that bondage could be broken. Praise silences the enemy and the avenger (Psalm 8:2).

People still do the same today, he says, making a job, a spouse, children, a club or sports their highest joy. God has to be our highest joy. In His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). People without God’s joy try to find fulfillment in jobs, relationships and hobbies, and it never works; he has come back from vacations more tired than when he left.

Israel was also obsessed with a natural, tangible presence of God: no right building, no God. Pastor Hohman hears the same today when people say they must go somewhere because God is moving there. Then you are saying you do not have God now, he answers. Where did He go? Jesus warned not to chase those who say He is here or there (Matthew 24:23–26). God wants worship not for His ego, but because it is where our freedom comes from.

“Where Are You?” Who Really Moved

Using the first-mention principle, Pastor Hohman goes back to Genesis 3:8–9. Adam and Eve heard the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day and hid from the presence of the Lord God. Notice, he says, the Bible does not say God left them. They left Him.

He tells a joke to make it stick. An older couple in a pickup watch a young couple drive by sitting close together. The wife asks why they do not sit like that anymore, and her husband replies that he has not moved. When God asked Adam, “Where are you?” He was not lost; He was asking Adam to see where he had gone. Love needs an object to be expressed, and Adam had stepped out of reach.

When we stop experiencing God’s presence, he teaches, the problem is not that God went somewhere. Rushing off to find Him elsewhere is not worship but unbelief, saying God did not do what He promised. John, who leaned on Jesus’ breast, warned, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21), because idols destroy the reality of the presence of God even while He is still there.

The way back to Jehovah Shammah is repentance, and Pastor Hohman insists it does not mean bawling and calling yourself a worthless worm. It means turning and thinking differently: thank You, Lord, You are here; I may not feel it, but You will never leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5).

Jehovah Shammah kept seeking fellowship after the fall. Enoch walked with God and was taken (Genesis 5:24). Abraham was called God’s friend (James 2:23). Moses communed with Him. None of them were perfect by human standards. Pastor Hohman recalls hearing about a ministers’ gathering in Germany where John Osteen first asked the leaders what they considered sin so he would not offend anyone. Scripture names certain sins, he says, but the Holy Spirit is our governor, and we must not let our liberty become a stumbling block to others (1 Corinthians 8:9).

God is more interested in His presence with us than in a manual of dos and don’ts. Jesus told the Pharisees they strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel (Matthew 23:24), forgetting mercy and the goodness of God.

From Garden to Temple to You

Pastor Hohman then traces where the presence of God chose to dwell through history. Wherever His people lived, He wanted to be with them. The table below follows his outline.

In Exodus 25:8 God said, “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them,” and in Exodus 25:22 He promised to meet and speak with Moses from above the mercy seat. When Israel moved into houses they never built, Solomon built a glorious temple, and in 1 Kings 8:10–11 the cloud of God’s glory filled it so the priests could not continue ministering.

Pastor Hohman shares his own testimony of the presence of God here. As a young man in the military he fell into drugs and overdosed in an apartment in San Diego. For three days he sat in a corner with his eyes open, believing he would die if he closed them. The whole time, he says, the Lord sat with him and told him he would be okay, that he would be used around the world and never forsaken. His encouragement is: never hang up your harp.

Later, Israel turned from the presence of God to idols again. Psalm 135:15–18 says idols have mouths but do not speak and eyes but do not see, and those who make them are like them. There is no intimacy with an idol. He recalls a film in which a boy asked a sports-obsessed coach what his team had ever done to hold or comfort him. Even after more than 50 years of marriage, he cannot idolize his wife, nor she him. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30).

When the exiles returned, they built a crude temple, yet Ezra 6:15–16 says they dedicated it with joy, because the presence of God was there. Herod later built a grand temple for his own glory, and Pastor Hohman teaches that the presence of God was in Jesus instead. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), and Jesus called His body the temple (John 2:19–21).

Now, 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, you are the temple of God and His Spirit dwells in you. Because Jehovah Shammah lives in you, stop praying, Lord, be with me today, he says. That is a faithless prayer. Pray instead, Father, thank You that You are with me today. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17), and the Lord will perfect what concerns you (Psalm 138:8).

This is where An Introduction to God becomes personal. He tells how his younger daughter barely spoke for years because her older sister always interpreted her babbling. God is like that: He became man to experience what we experience, so He understands even what we cannot put into words. Ephesians 2:19–22 adds that believers together are being built into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, which is why we must keep gathering together (Hebrews 10:25).

Living With Jehovah Shammah This Week

Whether you are in a garden of fear, a wilderness without direction, or a temple that looks fine while you feel robbed, Pastor Hohman says, the Lord is there. He leads the church in asking forgiveness for idols, then reads the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20), which ends with Jesus’ promise to be with us always. Here are practical steps from this message:

• Change your prayer. Replace “Lord, be with me today” with “Father, I thank You, You’re with me today.”
• Never hang up your harp. Keep praising in the hard season instead of making grief your focus.
• Name your idols. Ask whether a job, person, hobby or team has become your highest joy, and give God first place.
• Repent by rethinking. Turn your thinking toward His presence rather than condemning yourself.
• Gather with the church. Share what you are going through and what God has done; it builds His dwelling place.
• Enjoy life with God first. He is not taking good things away; He wants to be the greater priority.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 God introducing Himself after the fall
• 1:21 Our part opens our lives to Him
• 2:36 Embracing the character God gave you
• 5:02 Introducing Jehovah Shammah: the Lord is there
• 6:21 Ezekiel 48:30–35: the city with twelve gates
• 8:29 The earthly and heavenly Jerusalem
• 9:43 The common question: “God, where are you?”
• 12:20 The prophets brought hope; Psalm 46
• 16:13 Emmanuel, God with us
• 17:22 Psalm 137: harps on the trees
• 20:59 Praise to break bondage
• 23:25 God must be our highest joy
• 26:06 Genesis 3:8: who left whom
• 29:48 Keep yourselves from idols; repentance
• 31:02 Enoch, Abraham, Moses
• 35:40 The tabernacle and the mercy seat
• 37:59 “I’m not done with you”
• 40:21 Solomon’s temple and the glory cloud
• 43:51 Psalm 135: idols cannot speak
• 47:39 Zerubbabel’s and Herod’s temples
• 51:22 Stop praying “Lord, be with me”
• 56:08 You are the temple of God
• 1:00:26 Ephesians 2: built together
• 1:04:20 Prayer and the Great Commission

Names of God Series

This message is part of the An Introduction to God series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or continue where this one leaves off:

• First message: An Introduction to God: The Names of God, Part 1 — Elohim, the Creator Who Makes Covenant
• Previous: An Introduction to God: The Names of God #9 — Jehovah Rophe, the Lord Who Heals
• You are here: An Introduction to God (The Names of God) #13: Jehovah Shammah, The Lord Is There
• Next: An Introduction to God (The Names of God) Part 14: Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts

Frequently Asked Questions

Does God want praise because He needs it?

No. Pastor Hohman told a discouraged former pastor that God does not want praise for Himself but for us. Praise is a weapon that breaks bondage, and it moves our attention off whatever we have been worshiping, whether ministry, work or a building, and back onto the Lord. It is where our freedom, joy and fulfillment come from, not a way of feeding God’s ego.

If God is always present, why do I sometimes not sense Him?

Pastor Hohman compares it to the couple in the pickup truck: the husband had not moved. When we do not experience the presence of God, we have usually drifted, often toward something we have made into an idol. The answer is not to chase His presence somewhere else, but to repent, which he defines as thinking differently, and to thank Him by faith that He is with you.

Can I know God just as well without going to church?

Pastor Hohman says you can experience something of God at home, but you will never fully know Jehovah Shammah alone. Ephesians 2 describes believers being built together into a dwelling place of God. Sharing struggles, encouraging one another and testifying about what God has done is how that building grows, and he expects that intimacy to spill out into the surrounding community.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Ezekiel 48:30–35 — the city named The Lord Is There
• Psalm 46:1–3 — a very present help in trouble
• Psalm 137:1–6 — harps hung by the rivers of Babylon
• Genesis 3:8–9 — Adam hides from God’s presence
• Exodus 25:8 — a sanctuary so God may dwell among them
• 1 Kings 8:10–11 — the glory fills the temple
• Psalm 135:15–18 — idols cannot speak or see
• 1 Corinthians 3:16 — you are the temple of God
• Ephesians 2:19–22 — a dwelling place of God in the Spirit

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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