Question
9: Are there
more God's than one?
There is only one
living and true God.
The context of the
passage is God's address to his people
Israel. He is about to
lead them into
the promised land. He desires that the
people enjoy the land and
that they live
long enter it. Therefore, He wants
them to be
careful to observe the commandments
that He is
about to give
the him.
In verse
5, He
gives them the first and
greatest commandment, " you
shall love the Lord your
God with all
your heart,
with all your
soul, and
with all your
strength ". Notice, that
God's first command is not
a " thou
shalt not ", that it
is a positive
command: that
His people are to love
him. Not only are they
to love Him, there to
love Him supremely. But how did
they distinguish the one true
God from false
gods? He
tells us in
verse 4.
" Here, O
Israel ", is a call for the
entire nation to listen to
the words of
the Lord. He is not addressing
one particular individual. He is about to give the
basis for the kind of love that He is demanding of them. The way they distinguish the true and living
God from the
gods of the
pagans around them is that
first He is
their God. He uses the Hebrew
word, Yehovah, which is the
proper name for God that
we translate as Jehovah. He also uses the
Hebrew word, elohim, which would translate as god, to
speak of God
in a generic
sense. This is also translated
as god. He is identifying
his name as
the true God.
God told Abraham in Genesis 15:7,
“I am the LORD”. He used the same word
as He did when He speaks here in Deuteronomy.
He uses Yehovah. Again, this is
the proper name of God and means, “the existing one”. God later used the root word from Yehovah, hayah, which has a context of meanings,
“was, to be, to become, came, has been, exist”.
In other words, the name God gave Moses to give to the Hebrews was a
name that was synonymous with the covenant made with Abraham years earlier. He
was saying that He was the self existing one, Who, in Exodus, would be able to
deliver the people.
Looking back from Genesis 15
through Deuteronomy 6, it seems that God openly revealed Himself very
intimately to Abraham, but maybe not as openly to Israel. However, once they had been delivered and had
experienced and seen God’s glory on display, He reveals His holy name to them,
Jehovah. They know Him as deliverer,
provider, and protector. As such, He
says that “Jehovah is one”. The word
one, echad, simply means one as a
numeral. God is setting Himself apart
from the other national pagan deities of the nations around Israel. He is not saying directly, that He is the
only God, though it is indirectly implied.
Rather, He is saying that He is the only God who can claim the name of
Yehovah. He is the self existing
one.
In light of the situation in our
own land (Muslims, Christians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) have your
family discuss what sets the gods of these apart from the true God. Ask them if they would even acknowledge the
so called gods of these religions as gods at all.
The context of the passage is Jeremiah stating the case of the
difference between the idols that Israel had given herself over to and the true
God. Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel all
called Israel away from idolatry, but she would not hear the words of the
prophets. She continued until at last
she was taken away into captivity into the land of Babylon.
Let’s first look at what he says about the false gods of the
Gentiles. Here he uses the term Gentiles
to distinguish between His people and those who are not his people. He speaks of the Gentiles as making their own
gods (10:3-4). These gods can’t move
about on their own (vs. 5). They are
worthless doctrines (vs. 8). These gods
are worshipped by their creators.
However, Jeremiah reminds the people of something that they continue to
ignore. He says and uses the same words
that Moses used in Deuteronomy. He says
that in contrast to the false gods of the Gentiles, the LORD (Yehovah) is the true God (elohim).
Again, we find that Jeremiah is intimately acquainted with the God of
Abraham. He is so aqcuainted with him
that he references God’s aqcuaintance with him from before his birth (Jer.
1:5). The term, acquaintance, though not
complete, does give a proper idea of knowledge in light of Jeremiah 1:5 and
Romand 8:29.
He says that God is not like a wooden idol, but that He is living. He uses the word chay, which root has the
meaning of not only living, but of the source of life and able to give it and
to revive that which has died. God is
able to not only bring back physically those from the dead, but is able to
breathe the breath of eternal life within the soul of the dead spirits of men.
He also terms God as the everlasting King. While many nations had kings, including the
northern and southern kingdom, God is the king who is eternal. His kingdom is everlasting. He is over all the kings of the earth, both
past, present and future. He gave,
gives, and will give them their authority.
He is the only one who is omnipotent (all powerful). He is able to grant and take power from whom
He wills. Thus He is the one who can
bring all of the governments of the world to its knees and declare the whole
earth under the jurisdiction of His own rule.
Unlike the idols the Gentiles made, God possessed real wrath and real
indignation. Idol worshippers went to
all sorts of extremes to appease their supposed gods. Their gods wrath was figment of their imagination, but Jeremiah
warns Israel that the true God’s wrath and indignation is not imaginary or
without any teeth. The terms “wrath” and
“indignation” are synonymous with each other they have to do with God’s anger
and His fury unleashed upon wicked men.
What happens when this takes place?
The earth quakes and the nations cannot contain it. The true and living God will bring judgment.
Since we have dealt with verse 4
in a previous catechism question, lets’ briefly state that the Psalmist has
plainly said that we should praise God and sing to Him and bless His name, along
with proclaiming His glory.
The phrase, “He is to be feared
above all gods” is a poetic way of denying the existence of other gods. Just as we saw with Jeremiah in the previous
lesson, the Psalmist makes the clear distinction between the true and living
God and dead worthless wooden, metal, and stone idols.
In verse 5, the Psalmist uses the
generic term again for “gods”, elohim. He says of these gods that they are
idols. The words used in the Old
Testament for idols is eliyl. It means, “good for nothing, worthless,
or nought”. It’s root word simply means,
“nothing”. The Psalmist simply is saying
that the so called gods of the peoples are nothing. Why?
We could recall the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 115:4-8.
The Psalmist contrasts the good
for nothing idols of the people to the
one true God. He says that God made the
heavens. He simply sets forth a simply
rational accusation against idolatry.
Idols just sit wherever man decides for them to sit and do absolutely
nothing, but the LORD, again, Yehovah, created the heavens. He is not passive and moved along by men, but
is extremely active in the entire process of human events and in the
manifestation of time and space.
The context of the passage is Jesus’ high priestly prayer to the Father
on the night before His crucifixion. He
has already asked that the Father’s will be done in glorifying the Son and in
giving eternal life to the ones that the Father has given to the Son. He has therefore just interceded on behalf of
everyone who will ever come to faith in Himself.
Now He clarifies what He means by eternal life. He says that eternal life is to know God, the
one true God. Again, as we have seen
before, the God of the Bible is referenced as the one true God. Jesus uses the word for know, ginosko, which, as we have seen before,
means, “to know, to perceive, to become acquainted with”. Again, it is referenced as the kind of
knowledge, sexually, between a husband and wife. Jesus is stating that eternal life is not
just some knowledge about God that helps us have conversation about Him with
others, nor is He talking about academic knowledge that may earn us certain
sheepskins. Rather, the idea conveyed is
that we would be intimately acquainted with the one true God. That we would know Him as a husband would
know his wife and not follow after another.
Eternal life is a very close relationship with God, our Father.
Not only are we to have intimate fellowship with God the Father, But
Jesus said that eternal life was also to know Him. It does not stand to just believe in the
Father as God. We must go beyond that
and believe in His Son whom He has sent.
Another facet about God is how he is three persons, but only one
God. We will be looking at this next
week. For now, let’s just say that Jesus
Christ, in this statement, claims equality with God. No one can have eternal life and believe in
the Father only, nor can one believe in Jesus Christ only and not the Father (1
Jn. 2:22-23).
In closing, ask your family, “Is Jesus the one true God?” Have them ponder the great mystery of how God
can be three persons and yet one God.
Then tell them that they’ll be discussing it next week.