God Has Spoken: (Pt. 4)

"Only One God Has Spoken"

"Hear, O Israel; the LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your strength."
Deuteronomy 6:4-5

When God revealed Himself through His prophet Moses, God described Himself. He said that He is ONE God, not many "gods." The one and only God deserves ALL of our love, not just a part of it.



Confirmed by Jesus

When Jesus, the Prophet like Moses, came, He drew special attention to these verses from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. A leader asked Jesus about the most important command of the law. Mark 12:29 reports Jesus' reply:

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this:
'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Love the LORD your God with all your heart...'"

Jesus continued then to quote from God's message in Deuteronomy 6. This truth is the foundation for all God's other commands. If many gods had made us, they might all have a right to our love. But the greatest fact of God is that He is ONE! One ALONE has the right to our love, That leads to the greatest command: That our WHOLE heart, soul, mind and strength should go to Him alone.



Can We Love Anyone Else?

If _all_ our love goes to God, then it cannot be divided. Does this mean that we should never love anyone else? What about loving one's own husband or wife or children? What about loving other people? Jesus went on immediately to say that the second most important command is this:

"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:31, quoting
Leviticus 19:18).

The Christian husband should love his wife (Ephesians 5:25). Neither Moses nor Jesus thought that these kinds of love took love away from God. Why? Because it is GOD'S WILL that we so love others. The true way to show LOVE for God is to OBEY God.

"For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments"
(1 John 5:3).

If God is truly "Lord," He deserves our full obedience. We cannot claim to love Him while forgetting who He is and what He deserves. Real love treats Him as the real God He is. So, when we love others, as HE commanded, that fits perfectly into true love and devotion to Him.



What, Then, is Divided Love?

By this we mean: What kind of love takes away from the full love we owe to God? The prophets of the Old and New Testaments answered this question very clearly. We take love away from God by treating God as if He were "second best." We do it when we trust people or things more than we trust the God who made us. We do it when we worship or pray to others. When an enemy tried to make Jesus divide His love in these ways, Jesus replied, "Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only" (Matthew 4:10).

God desires and demands *first place* in our lives. He cannot accept second place, for that would be a lie. Simple honesty requires that God alone be recognized and treated with highest honor. No other can claim the kind of honor that should go to God.

"I am the LORD; that is My name! I will not give My
glory to another or My praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8).



The Name of the One God

The prophet Isaiah, in the passage just mentioned, was very certain of the true God. He is the One named "the LORD." Isaiah wrote in the Hebrew language, and in Hebrew that name is YHWH. (YHWH may be pronounced as YAHWEH). In many English Bibles, when you see the word LORD in large letters, it stands for this great name of God, YHWH.

When Eve gave birth to a child she said, "With the help of the LORD (YHWH) I have brought forth a man" (Genesis 4:1). She knew God's name, for He had dealt personally with her and her husband, Adam. Later, her children who turned to God "began to call on the name of the LORD (YHWH)" (Genesis 4:26). So "the LORD" is the One known from the very beginning as man's Creator.

When God told Moses to go to Egypt, Moses asked what name to use for God. In answer (Exodus 3:14-15) God said to Moses,

"I AM Who I AM. This is what you are to say to the
Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites,
'The LORD (YHWH), the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac and the God of Jacob -- has sent me to you.'
This is MY name forever, the name by which I am to
be remembered from generation to generation."

The name YHWH shows that God is the "I AM," that He continues TO BE. (The name YHWH sound like the verb TO BE in the Hebrew language.) As the self-existing One, God does not depend on anything else for His being.

Instead, all others -- whether spirits or humans or material things -- depend on Him for their being or existence.

"I am He; I am the first and I am the last; apart
from Me there is no God....I am the LORD (YHWH),
who made all things, who alone stretched out the
heavens, who spread out the earth by Himself"
(Isaiah 44:6, 24; 48:12-13).



No Other Gods

The first of the Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai was this:

"You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3).

When we understand who the LORD is, it is easy to see what is wrong with having other "gods." No one else can compare with God! Yes, there are some beings who have power. But all their power simply points to the far, far greater power of the true God who made them. He who gave them life can just as easily end it. Before Him, they are powerless!

The apostle Paul helped people to leave their useless "gods." He wrote letters to those who believed his message. Here is what Paul said:

"We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and
that there is no God but one" (1 Corinthians 8:4).

"You turned to God from idols to serve the living and
true God" (1 Thessalonians 1:9).

"Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to
those who by nature are not gods" (Galatians 4:8).


God is Spirit

Why have people made up their own ideas of "god"? Perhaps they feel that they can more easily understand and control such a "god." The true God is so great that He is beyond all that we can imagine. When King Solomon built a temple for God, he prayed to God,

"The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain You.
How much less this temple I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27).

When we think of just that part of the heavens we see, this is truly amazing. How can one Person fill the whole universe, and even go beyond it? Yet Paul also said of God,

"For in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts
17:28).

How can He be so far away, and yet also be all around us? If "He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27) why do we not see Him?

The answer is in the basic truth of God's nature. Jesus clearly stated,

"God is Spirit" (John 4:24).

How is "spirit" different from an earthly "body?" Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). The normal human body is very limited by the weaknesses of its flesh. It is tied down to one time and place. It cannot see or be in two places at the same time. Such limits do not have to apply to spirit. They especially do not limit the One who is called the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9).

God, as spirit, is so great that He is always present at all places. He can hold all in His control. There is no way to ever hide from Him.

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your
presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I
make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the
wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me" (Psalm 139:7-10).

"Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything
is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to
whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:13).



Does God Have Hands and Eyes?

If God is spirit, and not fleshly body, how can the Bible speak of His "hands," "arms," "eyes" and other parts? The following picture may help us to see the answer.

Imagine a man talking to an ant. He is trying to explain to the ant what a human city is like. The ant has never seen anything as large as our city streets. Yet the ant does have small paths and tunnels in its ants' nest in the ground. So the man speaks of his streets as if they were like those ant paths. He speaks of the human city as if it were like a very large ants' nest.

In the same way, God uses things that we can understand to talk of things much greater. He does not have our earthly kind of eyes and hands. But He uses "eyes" to speak of His seeing. He uses "hands" to speak of His power and action.

Though He uses these helpful words we should remember that we are still so very small beside Him. Like the ant with the man, some things about God will remain beyond our full understanding. We accept what God says in the simple trust that He knows how best to tell us of things far greater than us.



The Holy Spirit

One of the things that may be difficult to understand is how God is one, and yet ABOVE our limited idea of one. For example, the first verses of the Bible speak of both "God" and "the Spirit of God."

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters"
(Genesis 1:1-2).

Look again at the quotation from Psalm 139. The writer of that Psalm asks God, "Where can I go from your Spirit?" Then he says, "If I go up to the heavens, YOU are there." Why say "You" and, "Your Spirit"? why speak in two ways of God? We may not fully understand why. Yet God surely knows most about Himself. He knows how best to describe Himself.

Scripture talks often about the Holy Spirit. He is not just some tool or force of God. His is not a "thing." Instead He is Divine Person, described in ways that can only fit a person. Although He is sometimes spoken of as if He is part of God, yet the Holy Spirit is truly GOD, the only God.

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is freedom...which comes from the Lord,
who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

God has revealed Himself as both "Lord" and Spirit." This in no way goes against the truth He also revealed, that He is ONE. This oneness is above our full understanding. He is one, and there is no other God besides Him. Since He alone made us and cares for us, our hearts and lives belong wholly to Him.