One God

I don't know if you have found, as you read the Old Testament, it puzzling how a hard it seemed to be for God to get to the Israelite people away from idolatry. Has that ever puzzled you why they kept falling back into idolatry? I think it would help us maybe in this passage where he's talking about them entering the promised land and how severe his instructions are with regard to worship. I think it would help us maybe to see the setting in which this passage is written, because it's so different than in our world. I mean, all around us it's hard to find anybody who thinks that there's anything but one God who rules the universe. But that wasn't true with the people in the land where the Israelites were going. They had lived for many years in Egypt, where the Egyptians had a culture that had many different gods and goddesses who ruled the land. And usually when that was true, the gods or goddesses had particular areas of responsibility for ruling. They might rule the crops, or they might rule the rain, or they might rule the animals. And coming out of that culture, they'd been there 400 years with no Bible, no temple, no way by which they could actually learn or worship God. All they had were the stories of Abraham and his children. They were a long way from being able to be close to people who knew and could teach them about what God was like. They then are rescued from Egypt by the power of God. God comes and He goes head to head with Pharaoh and demonstrates great physical strength. He is able to do things that Pharaoh's soldiers and his wise men couldn't do. And finally, the thing that really gets them free is His death angel comes across the land and destroys the firstborn of every child in the family and all the animals. There's a powerful slaughter that takes place by the power of God. The people of Israel there see their God at work for the first time. And what they see is a God of tremendous power, a fighting God, a warrior God who stands with them. Whenever they are leaving, they get to the Reed Sea and there the waters parted and they cross over on dry land and God then swallows the entire Egyptian army with the water. And there they see the power of this God who's a warrior God, a powerful God, a forceful God. All across the desert, He leads them. At different times it comes along, He gives them water in miraculous ways. He gives them food in miraculous ways. They don't depend on farm crops, planting and harvesting. They're in the desert where it's dry and arid. The people of the ancient world thought of their gods in terms of physical geographical locations. The gods of the mountains or the gods of the valley or the gods of the desert. And as the Egyptians traveled across, as the Israelites traveled across the desert, they saw their God guiding them with fire and clouds. And their only acquaintance and awareness of Him was what they saw there. When He gave them on Mount Sinai, the instructions as to how they were to live, they saw what He was asking of them, but they had never, ever lived anywhere where they would plant a crop and harvest it. In Egypt they were slaves and they might have participated in some farming there, but they had not had that on all the years across the desert, wandering 40 years. This generation had never planted a crop, harvested it, and been a benefit of farming life. Now they were moving into a territory in the Canaan land where the people were all farmers. And as they moved into this land, God knew what they were going to encounter. They were encounter people who had their own ideas about what God was like and their own ideas about what it meant to follow Him. In Canaan there were two powerful stories that marked the lives of these people and caused them to believe what they believed. There was a Enyima Elish story, you can buy that, copies of it, where it tells of the God Marduk. Sometimes you'll see the name Marduk mentioned in the scriptures. He was a powerful, forceful God. He was the God of order and structure in the universe. And His opposite was Tiamat, who was the goddess of chaos. And the story was that there was a great battle between these two, constant battle between them. And Marduk lost, and Tiamat won. And then there was a great victory by Marduk, and he split Tiamat in half. Half of her became the sky, and half of her became the earth, all the animals in it. And out of the blood of this God, human beings were created to serve the gods, so the gods would never have to work again. And the human beings were given the responsibility of raising crops and working and producing animals and offering them as sacrifices to feed the gods. In the northern part of Israel, sort of on the border of what we would call Syria now, there was another different view of what life was like there. Again, they were agricultural people. And here, the God Baal, Hebrew pronounces it Baal, God Baal, was the God of order. And on the opposite side was another God of chaos again. What the gods did, they believed that this God Baal was defeated by the first God of chaos and had to appear into the nether world or the underworld for a period of time. And then the goddess who would help him, Ashtoreth, the Asherah poles in Israel, the story of Israel, his sort of mate, she would bring him back to life and he would come back up. And what the people of the ancient world saw, that worlds, that life came in cycles, circles. And it was the agricultural circle that fascinated them. What they would see in the spring was everything would come alive when the rains came. What they would see in the summer, it would get dry and the crops would be produced and then it would die. And in the winter, all vegetation would be gone. They thought of life, not like us, they thought of life as being cyclical, going in a circle, constant circles. We're so used to the biblical view of history where you have a beginning, a long line and an end. No other religions in the world have this view of life and history. They see it as constant circles, like the agricultural cycles. Now, all these people depended on the crops for their life and their animals for their life and children. They were very concerned about having children because the more children you had, the more crops you could plant and the more you could harvest. And then you would have someone to take care of you in your older years. So these three issues, animals and crops and children, were critical to the lifestyle of these cultures. Now, the Israelite people were moving in for the first time to become farmers. Never had farmed before. They had no idea what this was like. And what the Lord knew was when they got into this land where they were farmers and their farmer neighbors would talk about what they did to make their crops, they would talk to their neighbors and they would say, well, you know, Baal gives us the crop. God Baal was seen as a God of water. Water was a crucial ingredient for them. And so he was the God that brought water. Too much water would bring destruction. Not enough water would bring droughts. If you read through the Bible, you'll find that oftentimes droughts were a very difficult thing for people to survive with. The people of Israel got into Egypt, you remember, because there was such a severe drought over the land of Canaan that there was nothing, no crops to be able to harvest. And they had to go a long way to be able to find a place where there was fertility. So the God Baal was a God of water and Asherah, his mate, was a God of fertility, goddess of fertility. So Baal and Asherah were two, a God and goddess of fertility. Water was an important ingredient in this whole thing. And what the people who worshiped Baal did was they believed that human sexuality was sort of a magic imitation of what was taking place in the God world. And whenever Baal was down and submerged in the underworld, the sexual activity of human beings in worship, they would go to the temple where they worshiped. And there, there was a very elaborate ritual of sexual behavior. And this was intended to stimulate Baal so that he would be urged to overthrow the powers that held him in the underworld. And it worked every year. Every spring, the rains came. Every spring, the crops were planted and they grew and the harvest was there. They had physical evidence that their religion worked. The Israelites now move into this territory. They begin to farm. God knows what's going to happen to them. They're going to look at their neighbors and they're going to hear what their neighbors say about how this all works. And they're going to be tempted to join their religion together with the religion of Baal. See, their God was not the God of Canaan. Get this. He's not the God of Canaan. He was the God who was the God of the desert. And the people of that day believed that gods had geographical connections. There were gods who could only do things in certain places. One time the Israelites were fighting and they said, we've been defeated in the valleys. Their God's the God of the valley. Let's attack him in the mountains and then we can defeat him because he's only the God of the valleys. Everybody believed that way. And so the Israelites were tempted to believe our God had great power, but he didn't cause any rain in the desert. Water squirted out of rocks, but you can't grow crops like that. So we need a God who's going to be able to give us everything we need every day of our lives. Yeah, Yahweh's a powerful God in moments of disaster. When we were starving, he came to the forefront. When we were chased by the army, he came there with power. But we need a God that brings the rain. We need a God that fertilizes the ground. We need a God that will take care of the everyday activities of life in our cattle and in our families and in our crops. So here all the way they were surrounded by people who could convince them that their God provided this. So what they did, the Israelites did, was Moses warns them about it here. Don't you do take any of your own worship from them. I'm setting before you a blessing. Let me read chapter 12. You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. But what they did was they never turned away from Yahweh God. But what they did was they held on to the God of power for the times they needed power. Like, you know, when their nation would be overrun and then they would say, oh God, we need your great intervention and God would come and rescue them. And then whenever he rescued them, they depended on the God of everyday life, Baal, for the things that they needed, the crops, the children, and the animals. They had two different gods that they worshipped. And both of them they depended on. What God was telling them when they entered the land of Canaan, this is not to be the case, but this plagued Israel all of their lives. All the time that they were there, they kept having this problem. You may remember the story of Elijah and the gods of Baal, the prophets of Baal. The northern kingdom, in fact, when Ahab took over as king in the northern kingdom, he installed Baal as the religion of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was the official religion of the ten tribes. So that the worship of Yahweh in the south was the smaller religion, even though it had the city of Jerusalem in it. And Ahab and his wife Jezebel worshipped in the gods of Baal and they were profitable with that. And Elijah, the prophet, came to challenge them. And he called out and he said, God told him one day, I want you to go to Ahab and I want you to tell him that it's not going to rain in Israel until I say it's going to rain. What was he doing? He was challenging the god of water. He was trying to say, Baal does not bring you water. And I'll show you. I will tell you now Yahweh God will keep it from raining until I tell him to make it rain. And then he ran for his life. He ran and hid because he knew that they were going to get mad and the droughts came. And Ahab remembered what had happened and he sent his people out everywhere looking for Elijah. I'm going to bring that guy back. He caused us trouble. He caused the god of Baal to stop bringing us rain. And one day Elijah was told then to come back after he'd been gone for a long time. And he met a man who had been a faithful worshipper of Yahweh God. Ahab had gone to this man and said, I want you to find Elijah and bring him here because we've got to make him get us some rain. He's put a hex on us and we're not having any rain since he said that. Baal is not cooperating with us. He's standing in Baal's way of doing his job. So Elijah came up to him and said, I want you to go all over the land and find this guy Elijah and bring him back here. We're going to make him take this hex off of us. And he came up to him, Elijah did, and this man was a believer in Yahweh. And Elijah called him by name and he said, I want to go see the king. And he said, go back and tell the king I'm here. The man said, if I go back and tell him you're here and he comes out here and you're not here, he's going to kill me. I'm afraid to do that. He said, no, you go ahead and tell him I'll be here. So he goes to the king, Ahab, and he says, I want you to have a contest. You remember the story of the contest. You build your altar, the prophets of Baal build their altar, put their sacrifice on it. I'll build an altar, put a sacrifice on mine, and then we'll see whose God brings fire down to consume the offering. Prophets of Baal built the altar. They danced around. They hollered to their God. They screamed to their God. Elijah made fun of them and said, maybe he's resting. Maybe he's gone to the bathroom even. Maybe he's taking a nap. And they cut themselves. They did everything they knew in their rituals to bring the God out of the underground, back up into the heavens. He was called the God of the clouds. And incidentally, Psalms 68 verse 4, Yahweh God is called the God who rides the clouds. Many of the names given to God in the Old Testament are names that were also given to Baal. Because in this contest, what Elijah is saying is we want to see who really has the power. Now we're fascinated by the story of the fire came down and consumed the altar with all the water on it. But what the big story this was for these people, when it all finished, Elijah went out and said, it's going to rain. And he started praying for rain. And he sent his servants out there and said, you see any clouds? No, no clouds at all. He prayed some more, sent him out there again. See any clouds? No. Went on to finally said, yeah, I see one about the size of your hand out there. He said, go tell Ahab he better get back to Samaria because it's going to rain so hard his chariot will get stuck in the mud. And all of a sudden the clouds opened up and it rained. Yahweh, the God of rain. You see the contest here was who really controls the universe? Who controls the rain? Who makes the crops fertile? Who gives you everyday life? That was the test. Now, the people of Israel in this time, of course, they killed all the prophets of Baal and Samaria, but they never really got free from this. They never were able to turn their back on Baal. They sent the prophet Jeremiah and he kept telling them, you keep worshiping the God of Baal and I tell you what God's going to do. He wiped all the Canaanites out because of their worship of the God of Baal, not only because of the immorality, but they offered their children as sacrifices to Marduk and for and to Baal. And you are doing the same things and God is going to carry you off into captivity. No one believed him. Forty years he preached this sermon. They kept saying, oh, Jeremiah saw he said that for 40 years. Never going to happen. They got carried into captivity in Babylon. It was there that they began to look back and say, Jeremiah was right. Yahweh alone is God. All the way through here, what God was trying to prove to them is there is one God, the ruler of heaven and earth, and he has power over everything that there is. But the people of Israel had trouble seeing Yahweh God in the ordinary, everyday events of life. This may seem hard for you to understand, but let me show you how that principle is still at work. Do you know people that get up every day, they go to work, they raise their family, they do the things they're doing, and they never once see anything of God's hand at work. But whenever they get in real deep trouble, where they really need something powerful done, they will call a Christian friend or call a prayer chain and say, would you guys please pray for me? I am really in trouble and I need God's intervention. Then when things get better, they don't see God's hand in their job. They don't see God's hand in their everyday life. And if something really wonderful happens to them, what are they likely to say? I sure was lucky. Yeah, I sure was lucky. And every day when things go like they should, they say, well, that's good. Seldom do they say, God's hand is on my life and he's guiding me so that I make the right choices. He's worked this so that in the everyday events of my life, God is at work. They see God as a God of power for disastrous circumstances. But they do not see God in the fact they woke up today, that they have food on their table, that they have a job, that their kids are growing normally, that activities that they take place are God at work in their lives. They only see God in the great and powerful events of history and of their life. They're just like the Israelites. They had two gods, the God of great power that I need and then the God of everyday activities. You know who the God of everyday activities is? It's them. I made these choices. I went out and applied and got a job. I make a good salary. We're raising our kids, you know. We're making these choices every day. And I am in control of my life and doing the good things. And because of that, I have a family and a home and a job and a house and all these things every day. Then when disaster strikes, whoa, I better ask God for some help here because it's outside of my range of being able to do it. See, so it's not so silly what they did back then. It's just that we don't have crops and animals and we don't have the sexual behavior that we think will tempt God. What we do, though, is we try to live a good life. And we think that that will make it work for us. See, the Israelites had a God they depended on when they had great need and another God they depended on for the everyday events of life. And you look around you and you'll see that people here live the same way. They get up every day, go about their activity. They don't read the Bible. They don't talk to God. They just make the right choices the best they know how and expect things will happen right. But then when disaster comes, they're ready to pray. They want somebody to pray for them. They want help from God like they didn't need that help when they made the choices that got them in the problems they're in now. That's when they needed it most. But you see, what the Bible is trying to say is that God is the God who gives you breath in the morning, sleep at the night, and he's the God who gives you the ability to work. He gave you the mind to make choices, and he wants to rule every moment of your life. There is one God with power and authority in this world. And there's a whole world around you who thinks that you can make it just fine, except in the disastrous moments in which you ought to fall on your knees and ask God to dig you out of this hole. See, the people of Israel were in the same situation we're in. We live around a lot of people who think you can get by without God, except when you really need a bad—you're in a bad spot. And then you call a friend who's a Christian, you see, and you pray for me or ask someone to pray for you that you know does pray. And we're tempted to do the same thing. Aren't you tempted sometimes when good things happen to say, boy, this is sure fortunate, had good luck here? We all are, because that's the way the people around us think. What God asks of his people is, I want you to acknowledge there's only one great spiritual force in this world, and it's me. And I bring judgment on those who don't follow me, and I reward those who do. In every minute of your life, I am in charge and in control. I am the one who helps you make good decisions. I am the one that provides your food. I am the one that brings you children. I am the one who stands beside you in the ordinary events of life and in the moments of desperation. The Israelites' great sin was they were trying to merge these two beliefs into one, the belief in the God of power with the God of everyday activity. We do the same thing. The God of everyday activity, I make my own choices until I come to something that's too big for me, and then I call on God. Other than that, I'm perfectly capable of handling this on my own. What God does in the beginning of the people's entry into the promised land was to say, you must worship me and me alone, and you must do it exactly like I tell you, because I demand to be first in your life, and I demand that you worship me the way I tell you. Do not be like the other people around you. You do it the way I tell you to do it, for there is only one God. Israel had a hard time learning that, and don't you think for a minute it'll be any easier for you and for me. Let's pray. Let me ask you, how often do you consciously say to God, thank you for the ordinary events of your life? Do you take it for granted that you can handle most things yourself? Yeah, it's a big temptation to worship the God of everyday activity, your own best judgment. And so, Father, we find ourselves again, like the people of old, struggling to be able to remember that you're the God of every day and every moment. Struggling to be able to remember that you're the God of every day and every moment, and that nothing in this world happens apart from your power and your plan. Help us not to do what the Israelites did, try to have two gods, but to acknowledge you in all that we do. In the name of Christ, we ask this, amen.