Let us turn together in our copies of God's word to Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Deuteronomy chapter si6x, we'll look at a few passages this morning as we consider God's oneness. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, will be our primary passage this morning, before we read God's word, let us go to the Lord together in prayer, asking for his blessing. Oh Lord, what amazing grace that you would call us to worship You, that You would greet us with your blessing, that you would show us our our sinfulness and our need of a Savior, and pronounce that we are cleansed in him. Help us now to hear the voice of Jesus Christ in the pages of his word.
Hear that good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep to save us from our sins, I guess, to hear His voice and follow after Him and work in us what is pleasing in your sight, all to the praise of your glory. We ask in Jesus name amen Deuteronomy, six and verse four, this is the holy, living and infallible word of God. Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one in his high priestly prayer, our Lord Jesus tells us what it means to have eternal life. John, 17:3, this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, eternal life, according to Jesus, is to know God. Merely knowing about God is not eternal life. Even the devil knows about God. True, knowledge of God is deeper and richer than this.
Nothing is more important than knowing God, because God is the highest good. Biblically, to know God is to love Him, to commune with Him, to be near to Him, to seek His face and to gaze upon his beauty and glory.
The everlasting happiness of the creature consists in knowing the one true and living God. For these reasons, I wanted to take this opportunity to preach a sermon on one of the attributes of God, one of his characteristics from his word.
It is our matchless privilege as his creatures, created by him and created for him, that we can actually know Him, because He has revealed His glorious person and work to us. The attribute of God will meditate upon now is God's oneness or his unity, His Oneness or unity. The technical term for this attribute of God is his unity of singularity, his unity of singularity. And when we use this language God's oneness or unity of singularity, we're referring to how there is only one God. There can only be one God. And this one god is absolutely unique. Listen to how Herman bavinck defines this attribute of God. He says, There is but one divine being, and in virtue of that, of the nature of that being, God cannot be more than one being. And consequently, all other beings exist only from Him, through Him and to Him. This attribute of God teaches God's absolute oneness and uniqueness, his exclusive numerical oneness.
This attribute of God helps us to appreciate that God is unique, that he is special, that he is worthy of absolute, undivided surrender and service.
Meditating upon this attribute of God will help you to glorify and enjoy him, which is why you and I exist. Think of how God reveals Himself in His Word as the one and only God, absolutely unique in distinction from all else. Think about our passage here in Deuteronomy, six. Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the Lord is one. God affirms here his oneness, his uniqueness. You go back sometime to Deuteronomy, chapter four, and how God affirmed this. There has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you.
In Egypt, before your eyes to you, it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God. There is no other besides Him. So we see in passages like these that God reveals His Oneness and uniqueness to us by using his name, the Lord, the Lord translated in all capital letters, L, O, R, D, we might pronounce this name from the Hebrew as Yahweh, the one who reveals himself as I am, who I am, this name. Name the Lord is one name by which God reveals His Oneness and uniqueness. Only the Lord is God. No one else can claim deity. No one else can do what this God has done. No one else can create, no one else can redeem, no one else can overthrow the forces of darkness in almighty power. And when we read here in Deuteronomy six, the Lord our God is one, we see that God reveals Himself to be unique. He is the one and only the one single, living and true God. And it is possible here that even the word one can be translated to include only or alone. In that case, the sense would be, the Lord is our God.
The Lord is the only the Lord's exclusivity, his complete uniqueness is affirmed here.
This passage emphasizes that the Lord Yahweh is the only true God. But it also emphasizes something else. More specifically, here we see that the Lord is the only God entitled to that name. He stands alone, and as alone he stands supreme. No one and nothing else can claim deity but him, he and he alone, is worthy of the name Lord, and therefore he alone is worthy of the creatures absolute devotion. Think back to how God first revealed his name of Lord in the burning bush in Exodus three remember how Moses looks he sees the fire burning in the bush, but the bush is not consumed. The fire was not dependent upon the bush to be fire, unlike fire that we see and we make use of, which needs fuel in order to exist or else it will go out, God reveals himself as one who is like a fire that burns of itself. This fire does not depend on the bush to exist. It exists of itself in the same way God does not depend on his creation to be who He is.
God is who He is independently of creation. He is who he is in and of himself. That's when God uses his name, Lord Yahweh to Moses. I am who I am. It means that God is self sufficient. He is self complete, and the only one who can save he needs nothing from his creation. You and I do not add to him or improve him, and we cannot diminish him with this name. The Lord assures Moses that he is the Absolute One, the faithful one and the sovereign one. And as such, he alone is the very one who will, who will redeem Israel out of the house of bondage, even though they are miserable sinners, unworthy of redemption, and even though they are completely helpless against the Egyptians. All this helps us to understand the statement here in Deuteronomy six, verse four, only, this God is the all sufficient, self sufficient Lord. No other God is worthy of this name. All the gods that Israel would have seen in Egypt, all the gods that Israel was surrounded by in their neighboring nations, these were gods who only did things for you, if you did make them angry, or if you gave them things that they couldn't get for themselves. And even then, they could actually do anything for you, but our God. He is the Lord. He doesn't need us for anything. Instead, he gives us everything we need from his own self sufficient fullness. We don't have to try to convince him to be gracious to us. He is a gracious God. He is motivated, in and of himself to redeem sinners. Everyone else can call their gods God, but only our God is the Lord, the one unique self sufficient Savior, who alone is mighty to save no other God can do what our God can do. Let's turn to look at another passage on this theme and turn to Exodus, chapter 15. Exodus chapter 15, and we'll read part of that song of Moses there, looking at verses 1 through 12.
You then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider. He has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength And my song, and he has become. Come my salvation.
This is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt Him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy in the greatness of Your Majesty. You overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble at the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them. You blew with your wind, the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
Who is like You? O Lord among the gods who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome and glorious deeds, doing wonders. You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. Think about how this song of praise for the Lord's redemption in the Exodus, think about how it contains the mockery of the false gods.
Having multiple gods did Egypt no good. Did it for all their different gods, who each did different things. With all their powers combined, they were powerless against the Lord. All these gods ganged up against the Lord, but the Lord destroyed them all, and he did it by himself. We would find great interest in watching two evenly matched teams play each other.
In that case, both teams try as hard as they can to win, but that is not the case, as the Lord defeats the false gods. Did you notice the language in verse 6 and in verse 12, your right hand, singular is what destroys the enemy. As we might say, when the Lord overthrows all the false gods, he does it with one hand tied behind his back. He does it single handedly. The Glory displayed in the exodus is not a match up between two similar competitors. The Glory displayed in the exodus is from the overwhelming might of the Lord to show that he is incomparable and that any of the so called Gods are pathetic counterfeits in their worship, the nations did things similar to how a financial planner might do things at the risk of being overly simplistic. A financial planner might take your money and invest it in different stocks, different ways to make you more money. He might diversify your portfolio. If you put all your money in one company, you risk losing it all if that company does poorly. But if your money is in different companies, your risk is reduced.
One stock could go up, another could go down, but you can get rid of the bad stock before you lose much money, and you can buy other stock that may do better.
Again, at the risk of being simplistic, there may be wisdom in that kind of financial practice, but it is deadly deduced. The same thing in religion. This is what the nations did with their gods.
They would have said, believing in one all sufficient God is ridiculous. We need to have a water God and a harvest God and a fertility god and so on. And we go to each of them for our different needs, because no one God can do it all. This is another place where God's oneness, his unity of singularity, comes in. It may be wise to diversify your financial portfolio, but when it comes to your eternal well being, you must put all your hope in the only true, living God. I am, who I am, the Lord all the gods of the nations, put together, the Lord displayed are worthless.
That's what God demonstrated in the Exodus, as we see in this passage. But our God is the Lord, the absolute sovereign, all sufficient one, and there is none like him. And there are other places in scripture where God reveals himself as the one and only God, absolutely unique in distinction from all else.
Deuteronomy, 32: 39 see now that I even I am He and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. 2 Samuel 7:22, when David prays in gratitude for God's covenant with him.
Deuteronomy, 32: Therefore you are great, O Lord God, there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. First Kings eight, when Solomon died.
Deuteronomy, 32: Indicates the temple to the Lord. He prays, O Lord God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart. Let these words of mine with which I have pleaded before the Lord be near to the Lord our God, day and night, and may He maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God. There is no other then from Isaiah, oh, Lord of hosts, god of I, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God. You alone. Of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. And God says, I, I am the Lord, and besides me, there is no savior. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last.
Deuteronomy, 32: Besides me, there is no God. You now Francis turretson, one of the reformed scholastics of this 17th century, gives an illustration of this attribute of God, His unity of singularity. Turrets, and says that God's unity is not like the human race. It is like the sun.
Deuteronomy, 32: In a sense, the human race is one. There is only one human race, but that race divides itself into many humans. There are billions of humans in one human race. Each human individual is one and the human race is one. But if God's unity were like that, then God would merely be another god, alongside of Baal and Zeus and Allah, fame and reputation, self expression and self fulfillment. But thankfully, God's unity is not like this. There's not a category of God in which many gods are different instances like there is one category of human in which many humans are different instances, and it's not even the case that there is a category of God in which God is the only instance, and that is because there is nothing above or beyond or greater than the absolute personal God.
Deuteronomy, 32: Turretin uses the sun to illustrate God's oneness, while there are other lights in creation, candles and lamps and bonfires in the moon, there is no light like the sun. There is only one sun. It is the only one, and more than that, there is nothing else like it. All other instances of light are a poor comparison to the blazing light of the sun. It stands by itself uniquely. Nothing can compare to it, and there is only one. Now, of course, all illustrations of God's glory fail in some way. We can appreciate that in a sense, God's unity is like this. We can come up with other gods, things that we turn to for help, for comfort, for refuge, for happiness or identity. But when we see the Lord's glory in creation and redemption, we cannot help but confess the words of Exodus, 1511, Who is like You, O Lord. So God shows his uniqueness in this name, Lord Yahweh, and like this name God, shows his uniqueness in another name of his, the name of God, the name God in the Old Testament, the name God is the Hebrew word, Elohim. We might spell it in English, E, L, O, H, I, M, Elohim. And it is the very first name of God that He reveals to us right off the bat in Genesis, one one in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, Elohim.
Deuteronomy, 32: Here's what's interesting about this name, Elohim. It is a plural name, a plural name. Now, wouldn't that mean that in the beginning, gods, multiple gods, created the heavens and the earth. Does the Bible start off by saying that there are many gods, and then whittle it down over time to say there's actually only one?
Deuteronomy, 32: This is one area in which the children of believers, who are poorly taught, end up abandoning Christ when they come up against false teaching and they don't know how to answer. You'll hear critics of Scripture say things like, see, Elohim is a plural name. It should say gods, not God. You Christians think there's only one God. Not even ancient Israel believed that.
Deuteronomy, 32: Israel was so confused, having a long development in their religion. Belief in one God was invented by the prophets later on, just to get Israel to stop worshiping the other gods of the nations. Your Bible is full of errors. It's just a human document that patches together the contradictory beliefs of different people in different times and does not show us truth. You. How do we answer such criticisms? Thankfully, God's children, by faith in Christ, have nothing to fear as we seek to give a defense of the hope that is in us as we answer these objections, it is not our aim to win arguments and humiliate unbelievers. The biblical answers to these objections must first make us to glory in God's oneness and uniqueness, and only then will we be able to defend the truth with gentleness and respect. So how should we understand this plural name of God, Elohim? Does the Bible acknowledge the existence of multiple gods?
Deuteronomy, 32: Well, the critics who bring up this objection think that they are looking at the grammar of the Bible closely, in a sense, they are, but they're not looking closely at all of the grammar. The name of God, Elohim is plural. That is true, but you have to look at the rest of Genesis, one, one, the subject God is plural and the verb created is singular. So Genesis one one reads in the beginning, God Elohim, he singular created the heavens and the earth. The verb clearly shows that Elohim is only one divine creator and not multiple gods. In fact, every single time the Old Testament uses this name, Elohim, to speak of the one true God, it uses a singular verb to talk about the action of the plural noun, it shows that this plural name, Elohim is referring to one God, not many gods. That still leaves the question, why does the One God use this plural name to reveal his oneness?
Deuteronomy, 32: Isn't this confusing? Actually, far from being confusing, this plural name, Elohim, shows us something delightful about God's oneness. The plural of this name for God, Elohim, is not a plural of quantity. It does not reveal the existence of many gods.
Deuteronomy, 32: Rather this name, Elohim, is a plural of Majesty and fullness, a plural of majesty. That's why God uses this plural name to reveal to us the glory of His Oneness. And I would put it to you this way, Elohim is a plural name, expressing majesty, magnitude, fullness and richness within the one being of God, majesty and richness within his one being, as our confession of faith beautifully puts it in chapter two, paragraph Two, God hath all life, glory, goodness and blessedness in and of himself. That's what this plural name Elohim communicates that God is giving us a glimpse into the fullness of His absolute, unique, inexhaustible being and glory and personality. He reveals Himself as this name to show us that He is the originator of all being that exists outside of himself.
Deuteronomy, 32: Compared to him, all the nations are less than nothing in emptiness. But he is the god of immeasurable greatness. Isaiah, 40 verses nine and following, unlike the weak gods that we come up with, one God to do this and another to do that, the one true God is full of all power in and of himself, something that is true of no one else. It is this one God, Elohim, full of power and majesty, that created the heavens and the earth as a display of his power and majesty, and to give us a faint glimpse of the fullness of His power and majesty that he has in and of himself. All of this highlights for us what we've been saying, that God, the One True and only God, is unique and worthy of the worship of all his creation. Another passage to emphasize this, let's turn now to Psalm 96 Psalm 96 Let's look at verses five and six. For all the gods, the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens, splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Deuteronomy, 32: There is a wonderful word play here in verse five, the word translated worthless, worthless idols. This is the word Eli Lim.
Deuteronomy, 32: Now, what does that word kind of sound like? Kind of sort of sound like? Sounds like Elohim.
Deuteronomy, 32: And here God is displaying his glory by mocking the false gods, showing that they are counterfeits of him. He is saying, in other words, you the gods of the peoples, are not Elohim, the true God full of power and majesty. You are Eli Lim worthlessness. Look. True God here is the Creator. God is the Creator because as the one who has all life in and of himself, he is able to communicate that life outside of himself in creation. But the gods of the nations can't do that. They are not the fullness of power and glory. They are lifeless and worthless. God is living and true, and the gods of the peoples are dead and false, as Herman bavinck puts Well, besides the Lord, there is no other God. And the gods of the Gentiles are idols, non gods, dead gods, lies and deceit, not Elohim, but Eli Lim worthlessness. And in so far as real powers are worshiped as idols, they are considered not divine but demonic. Now, as we close, let me draw four conclusions from the oneness and uniqueness of God. First of all, if you are apathetic and careless about the God that we have heard from now in the preaching of His Word, you have no idea who you mess with. While it may be difficult, it is it is possible to break any number of civil laws and escape penalty.
Deuteronomy, 32: You can run from the authorities. You can run from your employer from your home.
Deuteronomy, 32: But you cannot run from the Almighty judge of all the earth.
Deuteronomy, 32: Before you even heard this sermon, you already knew that this God, the Lord, is the one true God. He created you for Himself. You know what He requires of you as his image and likeness. You know that he deserves your full allegiance and attention. You know this to be true deep down, no matter how much you suppress the truth or distract yourself from the truth by the by the vanity and vileness of your rebellious heart, no matter where you turn, no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape the voice of God pressing his claims upon you, as Cornelius Van til would remind you, God confronts man everywhere. God cannot confront man in the nature of the case anywhere, if he does not confront him everywhere. God is one. The law is one. And if man could press one button on the radio of his experience and not hear the voice of God, he would always press that button and not the others. But man cannot even press the button of his own self consciousness without hearing the requirement of God, this one and only the true and living God, confronts you with his requirements everywhere to return to Him, and you reject him at your eternal peril.
Deuteronomy, 32: Secondly, this one and only God has provided for you, the one and only escape from his wrath and curse that you deserve for your sin against Him, and He has made this provision in the Lord Jesus Christ, first, Timothy, chapter two, verses five and six, there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ, Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all which is the testimony given at the proper time. So your life is one of rebellion against this one true God, you deserved his penalty of wrath for your rebellion against Him, but your way of escape is the gracious provision of this one true God.
Deuteronomy, 32: This God, in the person of his son, took on a human nature, the Lord Jesus Christ, he gave himself a ransom for Hell, deserving sinners. His life of obedience Fulfilled God's requirements of us on our behalf. His death paid the penalty that we owe to God's justice for our rebellion. His resurrection gives us newness of life to live before him. His ascension brings us near to this one true god to set our affections upon Him, and His return will take us to the new heavens and new earth, where we will come before the throne of the one true God, finally, to see his face, to worship Him as His servants, free from all sin and misery for all eternity. And so even though you have incurred the wrath and curse of this God for your rebellion against Him, receive His loving and gracious provision of his mediator, Jesus Christ, to reconcile you to him in peace and friendship. Romans five, verse eight, God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Thirdly, God's oneness, his unity of singularity, shows us that He is, as we might, might say, the total package. We do not go to different gods for different things. It is not as if we go to God for salvation and somewhere else for help in daily life. It is not as if we go to God for moral help and go to therapy for men. Help. It's not as if God saves us and then it's up to us to go from there.
Deuteronomy, 32: Only God has all life, glory, goodness and blessedness in and of himself. That means that we go to him for all we need, and it means that we keep going to him over and over for all we need. We are not partly dependent on many gods. We are wholly dependent for everything on this one, all sufficient God.
Deuteronomy, 32: Fourthly, and finally, God's oneness also shows us that we must be entirely devoted to him.
Deuteronomy, 32: Let's end where we began and go back to Deuteronomy chapter six.
Deuteronomy, 32: Deuteronomy chapter six, let's look again at verse four and keep reading to verse seven.
Deuteronomy, 32: Hear O Israel, the LORD our God.
Deuteronomy, 32: The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise. So we see here that God's uniqueness. Verse four requires whole person, devotion to Him. Verse five, not external obedience, but love from the heart. Verse six, not occasional acknowledgement of him, but constant adoration. Verse seven, not just for you, but for everyone in your home. Verse seven, as the One God has given us himself and his covenant of grace, He requires that we give ourselves back to him in adoration and obedience to this God alone belongs deity, creation belongs to him alone.
Deuteronomy, 32: Redemption belongs to him alone.
Deuteronomy, 32: And therefore he demands and deserves all of you, all of the time, as Meredith Klein puts it to Yahweh alone, God's people must submit in religious covenant and him they must serve in the totality of their being with the intensity of love. Your attention and affection cannot be divided among many masters, for that is hatred to the one true God. The proper response to who God is and what God has done is exclusive intimacy and constant service. Please join me in prayer. O great God of heaven, we acknowledge that you alone are God, that You alone are worthy of worship and adoration and praise and blessing now and forevermore. Oh Lord, we are claimless creatures of the dust and miserable sinners at that so we must depend upon you to work in us what is pleasing in your sight, cleanse us Lord of all idolatry and unfaithfulness, and make us to be worshipers, glorifiers and enjoyers of the one, true and living God. Would you add now your blessing to the preaching of Your Word? We ask in Jesus name, Amen.