Sermon on Deuteronomy 32, You Shall Have No Other Gods

The first of the 10 Commandments is…

Exodus 20:3, Do not have other gods besides me.

Does this verse suggest that there are other gods competing with the true God for our devotion?

The son of a friend of mine had supposedly become a Christian recently. But now he was disparaging Christianity on several counts.  One issue he had was that the Bible talked about gods other than the one true God and Christian ministers never talked about this or taught on it.  It seemed to him that either there were other gods besides the God of Jacob, or the Bible was reflecting a mistaken view in some parts of it that gave credence to beings that were elsewhere described as false idols.  In that case it would mean the Bible wasn’t fully trustworthy as a source of truth.  What is the truth?  If someone you were trying to influence for Christ challenged you with this question, how would you answer?  Does the Bible really reference other gods besides the One whom we describe as the Creator of the universe and the One who sent Jesus to die for us?  Or will you allow that there are writers of Scripture who wrongly believed that other gods existed, though of course also believing that only one God was the supreme God?  Or is it all a big mistake, and the Bible doesn’t mention other gods as real gods?  Let’s look and see.

There is a message by Moses found in Deuteronomy 32 that interestingly can help solve our question because it depicts all these seemingly contradictory perspectives.  Listen to Moses’ message to Israel, and by implication, to us.

^32:1 Pay attention, heavens, and I will speak; listen, earth, to the words from my mouth.

Who is Moses addressing?  If the heavens are the stars, planets and asteroids, can they pay attention to Moses’ speaking?  Of course not!  They are inanimate objects.  If the earth is the rocks, plants, and oceans, can they listen to Moses’ words?  Of course not!  They are inanimate objects.  So Moses must be speaking to personal beings in the heavens and on the earth, who can pay attention to his words.  Have you ever addressed personal beings in the heavens?  You’ve addressed God have you not?  But is Moses preaching to God?  I don’t think so.  What other heavenly personal beings are there?  Angels, right!  Have you ever addressed angels in your messaging?  Ever texted Michael the archangel, or emailed the archangel, Gabriel?  What about fallen angels?  Have you ever talked out loud to a demon?  Who is Moses addressing, and if he is addressing both heavenly personal beings other than God, and earthly personal beings, humans, how does his message relate to each?

² Let my teaching fall like rain and my word settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass and showers on tender plants.

What happens to new grass and tender plants when dew and gentle rain fall on them?  They grow and flourish.  And that is what Moses wants his teaching to do for the heavenly beings he is addressing and the earthly beings he is addressing.  He wants them to grow.  Does God grow?  No.  But could angels, good and evil, grow?  I believe they could and should.  And of course, so can we humans.

³ For I will proclaim the Lord’s name.

What is God’s name?  Moses states it here, though it is hidden in our English translation.  Whenever you see the word Lord with the ‘ord’ in small capital letters, that is a representation of the Hebrew word for God’s name, Yahweh.  I have gotten used to noticing it and I usually replace the English “Lord” with Yahweh when I read.  I’ll be doing that in our passage today.  So Moses wants to declare Yahweh’s name, which means he wants to declare the character of Yahweh, what it is that makes Yahweh special, or, as he says immediately, he wants to…

Declare the greatness of our God! ⁴ The Rock—his work is perfect; all his ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, he is righteous and true.

Yahweh is a Rock, something solid to stand on in a desert storm or in a raging sea.  He is not shifting sands or drowning waters.  Don’t you sometimes think that everything is shifting under you.  You need a solid footing.  Everything about Yahweh is perfection and justice.  And He is true and faithful to those He loves. He is not moved by bias or prejudice when it comes to how He treats each and every one of His people.  He is the standard of what is right and true.  Unfortunately, Moses must add…

⁵ His people have acted corruptly toward him; this is their defect—they are not his children but a devious and crooked generation. ⁶ Is this how you repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Isn’t he your Father and Creator? Didn’t he make you and sustain you?

Yahweh made Israel a nation, brought them out of Egypt and slavery there, and sustained them with food and water and protection and direction while they traveled through the desert from Egypt to Canaan, their homeland.  But while they were in the desert, waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai, where Yahweh had called him up to give him the law for His people, the people persuaded Aaron, Moses’ brother, to take their gold and make them images of gods to worship and to lead them.  And they bailed on Yahweh on several other occasions, worshiping other gods.  Moses continues…

⁷ Remember the days of old; consider the years of past generations. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will teach you. ⁸ When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance and divided the human race, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the people of Israel. ⁹ But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob, his own inheritance.

Yahweh is God of all the nations, determining their boundaries, the lands they inherit.  But He is especially the God of Israel, His people, viewing them as His special inheritance who receives His special affection.  They are the center of His world, the focus of His attention, the ones He has chosen to use as the example for all the other nations.  The people of Israel are the ones Yahweh intended to teach the other nations about Him, the true God.  He continues…

¹⁰ He found him in a desolate land, in a barren, howling wilderness; he surrounded him, cared for him, and protected him as the pupil of his eye.  ¹¹ He watches over his nest like an eagle and hovers over his young; he spreads his wings, catches him, and carries him on his feathers. ¹² The Lord alone led him, with no help from a foreign god. ¹³ He made him ride on the heights of the land and eat the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from flinty rock, ¹⁴ curds from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, rams from Bashan, and goats, with the choicest grains of wheat; you drank wine from the finest grapes.

Yahweh had done everything possible to make Israel a flourishing nation, without the help of any foreign god.  Israel was aware of the various gods the peoples around them worshiped.  Egypt worshiped Osiris, Isis, Horus, Re, Amon, and Anubis, among others.  The peoples of Canaan worshiped Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, Dagon, El, and Moloch. None of those gods helped Israel make it through the desert.

In Exodus 12:12 Yahweh told Moses, before the eve of Passover and Israel’s departure or exodus from Egypt, “For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.”  Were these real gods Yahweh was talking about?  If they are not real, what can it mean to pass judgment on them?  Who did Yahweh judge?  These gods didn’t provide any help to the Egyptians when Yahweh turned the Nile River into blood, or turned the daytime into supernatural darkness, or sent millions of frogs to infest the land, or sent giant hailstones to destroy crops and livestock.  And these gods would be no help when Yahweh passed through Egypt and took the lives of every firstborn son of humans and animals.  If these gods were real, they were certainly powerless before Yahweh.

So Israel had every evidence that Yahweh was her deliverer and Savior.  But…

¹⁵ Then Jeshurun became fat and rebelled—you became fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation. ¹⁶ They provoked his jealousy with different gods; they enraged him with detestable practices.

My wife and I support a young woman in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  We had led her to the Lord in 2008.  Her parents had died of AIDS and her grandmother could not afford to feed her, so her grandmother gave her to God one day, which means she took her out in the middle of the city and she abandoned her on the street and left her to God to take care of her.  Well, He did.  She made her way to our ministry there in Addis and she got saved.  We helped her with room and board and school and now she is studying accounting in college.  What do you think we would feel if we started seeing Facebook posts from her thanking Fred Smith from FedEx for sustaining her?  I’m pretty sure Fred is a good guy, but he had nothing to do with Mitu’s rescue from the streets.  He hasn’t been taking care of her for 12 years.  He hasn’t answered her questions, commiserated with her when she’s down, or prayed for her all this time.  What could possibly motivate her to do such a thing?  We’ve been faithful and loyal to her.  It would be the utmost betrayal.

But that is exactly what Israel did to Yahweh.  They gave credit to Baal for making their crops grow, for making their cows birth calves, and for sustaining their lives.  They brought sacrifices to Baal and Molech, in some instances even sacrificing their infant children to Molech to move him to act on their behalf.  But Moses explains what was really happening.

¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known, new gods that had just arrived, which your ancestors did not fear.

Oh boy, now this is something we didn’t expect.  The gods that Israel began sacrificing to were not who Israel thought they were.  Baal was not the god of fertility and storms.  He was a fallen angel who was masquerading as a god who deserved worship and to whom you must sacrifice to get his blessing.  No doubt this demon was able to persuade his followers with supernatural acts of power.  No doubt he was able to communicate to his prophets and priests to express his desires and wishes.  But was this demon “a Rock, something solid to stand on in a desert storm, not shifting sands or drowning waters.  Was everything about him perfection and justice.  Was he true and faithful to those who worshiped him and not moved to bias or prejudice when it came to how he treated each and every one of his people.  Was the demon representing himself as Baal the standard of what is right and true?”  No way.  So Moses’ message to these heavenly beings and to the people of Israel was…

¹⁸ You ignored the Rock who gave you birth; you forgot the God who gave birth to you.

So what is Yahweh’s verdict?

¹⁹ When the Lord saw this, he despised them, angered by his sons and daughters. ²⁰ He said, “I will hide my face from them; I will see what will become of them, for they are a perverse generation—unfaithful children. ²¹ They have provoked my jealousy with what is not a god; they have enraged me with their worthless idols…

So here is the final verdict.  Israel has worshiped worthless idols that represent what is not really a god.  The demons who masquerade as gods are not really gods in the sense of the true God, Yahweh.  They are real, supernatural beings with abilities beyond that of humans, but who are nothing compared to Yahweh.  Only Yahweh can create something out of nothing.  Only Yahweh knows all things, is everywhere present, is eternal, is indeed uncreated.  Only He is capable of providing the rain that gently waters the new grass and tender plants, that causes the crops to produce their yield, that makes plants and animals and humans fertile for reproduction.  Only He is capable of rescuing us from the consequences of our rebellion.

Moses finishes his message with these words for Israel:

³⁶ The Lord will indeed vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees that their strength is gone and no one is left—slave or free. ³⁷ He will say, “Where are their gods, the ‘rock’ they found refuge in?  ³⁸ Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you; let it be a shelter for you. ³⁹ See now that I alone am he; there is no God but me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal.

So what have we learned?

1. 1. Moses has exposed the heavenly beings as charlatans

Moses has exposed the heavenly beings he is addressing as charlatans.  He has accused them of conspiring to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make them think they are gods worthy of worship, gods necessary to placate in order to get their blessings.  Why would demons do this?  Their only agenda can be to compete against God, the true God, for the worship from creation.  They want to rule the kingdoms of this world.  Are they really gods?  Yes and no.  They have managed to pass themselves off as deities who are in control of the earth.  They are definitely more powerful than humans.  But they are nothing compared to Yahweh.  They don’t really have control over His creation.  So, in effect, they are no gods.

 

2. Humans will be deceived by these charlatans

Humans will grow complacent in God’s provisions for them (Moses says, “fat, bloated and gorged”).  They will forget that it is Yahweh alone who provides for us and they will look to powers that claim to provide.  They will deify these powers.  They may still give Yahweh a nod, but also look to these powers to save.  We’re nearing an election and we have candidates for the presidency of the United States making claims that they can “make” something good happen in our nation.  And we believe them and warn each other that our only hope is getting one of them elected.  Do you see the idolatry in that?  Are there demonic forces encouraging this?  You’d better believe it.

Do you recall the passage in Daniel 10 where he was waiting for an answer from God to a prayer request and after many days an angel came to him with the answer?  The angel told him that he had been delayed in bringing God’s word to Daniel by the “prince of Persia.”  What could a human prince in Persia do to one of God’s angels?  Nothing.  This wasn’t a human prince who withstood this angel, it was a fallen angel, a rebel against Yahweh, who had some responsibility over Persia.  This was his territory and he had motive to resist God’s plans for Persia and for God’s people.  The angel tells Daniel that the prince of Israel, Michael (who is elsewhere called an archangel) helped him get free to bring Daniel the message.  He gives Daniel the message, which details the political events to follow and the events of the end of days.  He then tells Daniel that he will encounter resistance as he returns.  This is a glimpse into the spiritual conflict taking place behind the scenes.

There is a prince of the United States, and China, and Great Britain, and Russia, and Canada, and Mexico, and Japan, etc.  There are invisible spirit beings who are engaged in battles reflective of and causative of the conflicts between nations and the delusion of nations, all under the leadership of Satan.  And they are in some sense the power behind some of the leadership in these nations.  How’s that for a conspiracy theory?

So what should we learn from this about God and gods?

1. We must not put our trust in any human leader to deliver our nation or make it flourish.  They are “no gods,” and may in fact be under the sway of demons.
2. We must acknowledge that we have no strength.  Moses said to Israel in v.36 of his Deuteronomy 32 message: The Lord will indeed vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees that their strength is gone.  Until we see that we have no strength we will not depend on the true God, Yahweh, to be our God and deliverer.  We must acknowledge that none of our political leaders on the national scale or any scale have the power to accomplish what God alone can accomplish.  Any leaders who claim they do have such power should be rejected.
3. We must utilize our greatest weapons to wage spiritual war: truth and prayer.  False gods, demons, rely on deception to gain sway over us.  They lose out when we adhere to the truth.  And the true God responds to our prayers.  He alone can answer our deepest needs.  He alone deserves our worship.

You shall have no other gods before Me!