THE ONE LIVING & TRUE GOD

 

THE ONE LIVING & TRUE GOD

Westminster Shorter Catechism 5

Quest. Are there more Gods than one?

Ans. There is but One only, the living and true God.

One God Only

It may seem strange to claim that there is only one God. However, people have been making gods since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden. The Greeks and the Romans had a Pantheon of gods. The Romans just gave new names to a lot of the old Greek gods. E.g., they renamed Neptune, their god of the sea, Poseidon. The Norse people, such as the Vikings, worshipped many gods.

Image from Web

Some of the days of the week are named after some of the gods of the Teutons. Sunday is named after the sun, Monday, after the moon. Tuesday is named after Tiw, Wednesday after Woden, Thursday after Thor. Friday after Frigg or Fria, a Norse goddess of love. And Saturday was called Sater-daeg by the Anglo-Saxons, after the Roman god Saturn. And, we shouldn’t really wonder why the days of the week are named after Teutonic gods, since English is the most widely spoken of the Teutonic or Germanic languages.

Now, I mention all of this, to remind you that we, in Western society, are surrounded by reminders of the many, many gods of the pagans. It’s not just in the mystical Eastern religions such as Hinduism that many gods are found, but traces of many gods are right under our own noses.

But, regardless of the many, many gods of the pagans, the Bible reveals that there is but One God only. E.g., the Lord through His Prophet Isaiah says to His people in Isaiah 45:5, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God beside Me.” Then in verses 6 and 7 the LORD identifies Himself as the Creator, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.” In verse 12 He says, “I have made the earth, and created man on it. It was I – My hands that stretched out the heavens, and all their host I have commanded.” The end of verse 14 says, “…There is no other God.” Then He says in verse 18, “For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD, and there is no other.” And finally in verse 22 the LORD says, “Look at Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

So, even from this one chapter of Scripture, i.e., Isaiah 45, we see that there is only One God. And we see that this one God is no “local” or “localized deity.” This One God is stating that He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Therefore, what does this make your Neptunes and your Poseidons?  I mean, these pagan gods are supposed to rule the seas and such like! But this One God who reveals Himself in Scriptures claims to have made the seas. As His people said in Nehemiah. 6:6, “You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things on it, the seas and all that is in them, and You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You.”

So, one can only wonder why some folks allege that the Christian’s God is just one God among many. Right from the very outset of the Bible, right from the very first verse God demonstrates His uniqueness. For, it says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So how can God possibly be only one god among many when He says Himself that there is no other god?

And how can He be one god among many when He alone is the Creator of all things. Therefore, even if there were such things as other gods, God would still be God. For these other gods would owe their very existence to the One living and true God. So, to claim that the God who has revealed Himself through the Scriptures is anything like the pagan deities is clearly blasphemous. It’s to break the first table of God’s Law, and the 1^st Commandment in particular.

God means it when He says to Mankind, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” (Exod. 20:3). He’s not just saying this to Christians. He’s not just saying, “Christians, have no other gods but Me. But as for the rest of you, you can have as many other gods as you like!” No, there is only One God, the source of all life, and He is the only true object of worship.

It’s as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, “…there is no other God but one. For even if there are so called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ…”

So, for Christians there is indeed only one living and true God. However, for the non-Christian, there are any number of ‘so-called gods’ as Paul calls them. These gods, so-called, do not exist, they are idols, i.e., false gods. They exist only in the mind of fallen man whose “…heart is a factory of idols”, says Calvin. However, we should note, just in passing, that Satan and his demons are behind many of these so-called gods. But just before we move on, we need to consider the oneness of God in and of Himself.

Now, I know I’m not alone here, but whenever I try to contemplate the Being and nature of God my head begins to hurt! But what else should you expect when you think about the Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable One? But this shouldn't deter or stop us. We need to keep on striving to gain deeper knowledge of our God. For how else are we to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever if we don’t know much about Him?

Our forefathers referred to a piece of Scripture as the “Shema.” The Shema is the first word in a passage of Scripture found in Deuteronomy 6. “Shema” is the Hebrew word for “Hear!” The Shema begins in Deuteronomy 6:4: where the Lord says through His Prophet Moses, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!”

Literally it’s, “Hear Israel, Jehovah our Elohim, is one Jehovah.” “Elohim”, the Hebrew word translated “God” is a plural word, as you know. It’s not a singular word, nor is it a dual word as you find in the Hebrew language. Rather “Elohim” when it refers to God, is a plural word meaning at least three Persons who are that One God.

Yet, elohim is also the Hebrew word for “gods” plural. You’d see this if you were to look at, say, Psalm 136:2, e.g. There you’d read these words: “Oh, give thanks to the God of gods.” The God of gods is literally the Elohim of elohim. So, we need to hang on to what God is telling us. He is telling us, as we’ve seen, that He alone is God, i.e., Elohim. Yet God is, as we know from Scripture, a plurality of persons, triune, i.e., the Trinity. So, with all of this in mind, the Shema teaches us that, Jehovah, while being a plurality of persons, is at the same time only One Jehovah. (Jehovah or Yahweh are simply English pronunciations of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton YHWH). The Hebrew word ‘one’ in the Shema, ‘ehad’ speaks of the unity or oneness, or singleness, or uniqueness of God.

So we see in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, then, clear indication of the oneness and the manyness of God, or the unity and the diversity of God. Therefore, God is not one god among many. Rather He is the One and the Many, the Triune God. For God the LORD is the united One.

But the main emphasis of the Shema is the declaration that there is only one God. And we’re considering Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 5, which deals with the Oneness or Uniqueness of God. However, Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 6 deals with the doctrine of the Trinity. Therefore, we'll hold off till the next Q&A before we really study the Triuneness of God. But for now, we’ve seen then that there is One God only, and that this God is One.

One Giver of Life

Our Catechism says that He is the Living God. By Living God is meant that He alone is the one and only God who is alive. Our God is the one and only God there is in existence. All other gods are mere inventions of the fallen and fertile imaginations of men.

God, then is the one and only God living. And because He is the only God living, He is the only God able to give life and sustain and maintain it. That’s why Isaiah says, “O God of Israel, the Saviour” (Isa. 45:15b). That’s why God says in Isaiah 45:22, “Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”

The Living God gives life – He saves life from death. He alone is the Creator. And He alone is the Sustainer of His creation. He alone is its Saviour. Therefore, He is unique in that all things depend upon Him for their being and existence. It’s as the Apostle Paul said to the Athenians, “…In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28b). So, all creatures, including you and me, owe our existence to God. Therefore, He alone is God and worthy of our worship. For He alone is the life giver.

Some people claim that there would be no life on earth, were it not for the sun in the sky. If by this they mean that without the sun the plants wouldn’t grow and without this source of food we’d starve, then fair enough. We all heard about photosynthesis and chlorophyll and all of that at school. We heard how God has designed plants to convert carbon dioxide, etc, to carbohydrates, by use of sunlight.

Perhaps your school neglected its moral obligation to teach you about the Creator's sovereign control of it all? If this is the case, then you would have been left with the impression that the sun is god. For god is that to which all living things owe their existence. Therefore, if the sun fits the bill, then the sun must be god!

Sunday got its name from the pagan Romans. It was a holiday to them, it was called dies solis, meaning ‘sun’s day.’ The ancient Egyptians would worship the sun, or the sun-god Ra or Re. Ra was usually represented as the creator and controller of the universe. And what’s the difference between this and what the modern-day Naturalist teaches? Don’t both the ancient Egyptian and today’s Evolutionist teach that the sun is the source of all life? However, they both see the need to add water to their pantheon of gods. The Modern Naturalist doesn’t believe that life can exist without water. And the Ancient Egyptian placed much of his hope on the god of the River Nile. Mind you, the One Living and True God demonstrated to the Ancient Egyptians that all their gods were false gods. Jehovah Elohim proved to them that He is the God of gods – Elohim of elohim – by sending them the Ten Plagues, didn't He?

If you look into it, each of those plagues paralleled ten Ancient Egyptian gods. E.g., when God turned the Nile to blood, He demonstrated that their god of the Nile had no control over the River Nile. And in the final plague, the death of the firstborn, God demonstrated that Pharaoh himself is no god in that he couldn’t even preserve the life of his own son!

Yet the Ancient Egyptians worshipped their Pharaohs as gods! So, the Ancient Egyptians kept on ignoring the revelation of the only living and true God, given to them by God through Moses and Aaron, and they paid the price of their unbelief. And alas, it’s the same for the modern-day Darwinists, Naturalists, and Evolutionists. They insist on ignoring or attacking the revelation God has given them through the Scriptures. And they and their children and all those whom they teach continue to perish in their sins, as did their fellow unrepentant Ancient Egyptians.

Image from Web

When you think about it, God also trumped Poseidon and Neptune when He drowned the whole Egyptian army in the Red Sea! But there remains hope in the One Living and True God for all those who will turn to Him for life. For He alone is the giver of life – He alone is Saviour.

Neither the sun, the moon, the stars, nor the water are the givers of life. Neither is the earth, the wind, or the fire the givers of life. And yet people in all times have looked upon these things as if they were gods. As Paul the Apostle says, “…[they] exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen” (Rom. 1:25; cf. Josh 34:2, 14-16).

Yes, we are to love and respect God’s creation. But we are not to worship it or any part or parts of it. We are to worship the One Living and True God alone.

One Object of Worship

Now, much of the “Greenie Movement” we see today is guilty of creature worship, which is to say that many of them are making gods out of the flora and fauna of the planet Earth. Indeed, many of them refer to Earth itself as ‘Gaia’.

Now, to be sure, not everything about the Greenie Movement is bad news. Christians should have a lot of time for people who care about and for God’s creation. However, we do part company when it comes to the question of ownership. Whose Earth is it? And who is the Creator and Sustainer of life on this planet? Well, it’s not Gaia, is it? To the Ancient Greeks and to many Greenies today, Gaia was and is the personification of what people refer to as “Mother Earth” and “Mother Nature”. Perhaps you think of these appellations are merely poetic? However, neither Earth nor Nature are our “Mother”. The Triune God alone is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:32).

Now then, modern Naturalism was the natural development of Deism. The Deistic view of God is that after He created the universe and set it everything in motion, He left His creation to evolve or develop on its own without His interaction or interference. The Deistic view of the earth is one that is detached from God. Hence the Deist started talking about nature apart from God. He would describe the mechanics of the earth, the seasons, the sun, rain, wind, the life and death of earthly creatures as “Mother Nature” caring for and nurturing her charge. “Mother Nature,” and “Mother Earth,” are personifications of the creation, especially the earth and the seen and usneen forces acting upon it.

The Modern Naturalist went the next step or even a few steps further than his father the Deist. Like the Deist the Naturalist doesn’t believe that God interacts with His creation. But more than that, He doesn't even acknowledge that God ever was the Creator! The Modern Naturalist believes only in blind chance, and blind forces, “the forces of nature”. Perhaps he is even loath to speak in terms of Mother Earth or Mother Nature lest he betray even a hint of the One Living and True God in his vocabulary.

The consistent Naturalist speaks only of Nature. To him Nature is cold and heartless. To him the universe is an environment of blind physical forces and genetic replication, without any rhyme or reason. There’s no such thing as absolute justice in the Naturalist’s universe. For he believes it has no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. He sees Creation – no he wouldn’t be caught dead calling it Creation – he believes that the universe is just a place of blind, pitiless indifference. The god of the Naturalist then, is simply Time and Chance. For he attributes being and existence to these, (hough he wouldn’t necessarily refer to “time and chance” as god).

The Naturalist and those like him are spoken of in Psalm 14, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Psa. 14:1-3).

So, what do the Deists who believe in a god who is indifferent and uncaring toward his Creation, and their offspring, the Naturalists have in common? Well, they both believe that the universe and this earth is devoid of God.

And what do they have in common with those Greenies? Well, they all deny the existence of the One Living and True God. Therefore, they deny Him the worship He is due from them as creatures toward Him who is their Creator. And hasn’t God already demonstrated to those who worship Mother Earth that they are wrong? And hasn’t He demonstrated to those who deny that He acts upon, or interacts, or has ever interacted with His creation, that they are wrong? For didn’t God send a flood in Noah’s day upon every creature on earth with the breath of life in it – apart from those in the ark?

The One Living and True God drowned Mother Nature or Gaia, just as He did to the ancient Egyptian army under Pharaoh in the Red Sea. You bet that God interacts with His creation! And, as the Apostle says in Acts 17, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).

Yes, it’s a good thing to love the earth and the flora and fauna on it. The Deists do; the Naturalists do; the Greenies do; and so do all consistent Christians. And doesn’t Scripture say, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17).

So, God then, loves His creation and He loves the creatures He has made. Otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent His Son to die in order to redeem it. But when it comes to every non-Christian, the words Jesus spoke to the woman at the well stand true, “You worship what you do not know … but the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:22-23).

Conclusion

We ought to thank God that He, by His grace, sought us to worship Him. For, were it not for His grace we too would be worshiping the non-gods of the non-Christians. We too would be worshiping the creation and not the Creator (Rom. 1:25).

So, pray for their conversion, pray that God would be merciful to them and grant them repentance. He was merciful to us! For, there is indeed coming a great Day of Judgment.

Listen to the words of His Prophet Jeremiah, “The LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth will tremble, and the nations will not abide His indignation. Thus you shall say to them: ‘The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens” (Jer. 10:10-11).

Pray therefore, that the people do not perish along with their gods. But rather that they repent and believe in the Gospel, and thus worship the One Living and True God.