To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him. Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire. Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.

Deuteronomy 4:35-39

From the beginning of the book of Genesis, through the flood, through Israel’s escape from Egypt to the parting of the Red Sea and subsequent conquests of nations, the Bible, in its march toward the coming of Jesus, leaves no question in the reader’s mind who is ultimately in control of man’s failures and successes, physical lives and eternal souls. As Moses reminds the Israelites — and us — in these verses in Deuteronomy, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has no peers.

In the last week, I have been looking at this book, which is essentially a collection of three speeches given by Moses recounting much of what has already happened in the previous four books. Two words are poignant in knowing what the book is about. The first is the Hebrew word “devarim,” which comes from the opening words of the book, “Eleh ha-devarim,” meaning “These are the words.” The other is the Greek word, “Deuteronomion,” where we get the English title for the book, meaning “second law.” So, “these are the words” of Moses, recounting the laws God previously gave.

I found this book particularly interesting and significant for the Christian because after a series on lengthy narratives, genealogies and law-giving, the reader is given a clear, personal directive from a venerated man of God that the One they have attempted to follow — though sometimes faltering and complaining of their plight — is truly worthy of our worship. One writer summed it up well: “Obviously, a great deal of dialogue has been heard in the first four books of the Bible, some of it vivid and impassioned. And in the Book of Leviticus, as noted, the Lord recites a detailed code of law. Before Deuteronomy, however, no one has spoken to the Israelites at anything like this length in anything like so personal and rhetorical a style about themselves, their God, and their destiny.”

The key word there, I think, is “personal.” Moses isn’t just retelling all the Lord had done for them through bringing them out of Egypt and continuing to meet their needs, based on their obedience, he seems to be telling them on an intimate level why God is worthy of their devotion, just as the Lord has been devoted to them.

As we see through the Pentateuch, numerous individuals, including the Israelites at various times, fell into Baal worship. Perhaps they saw some similarities between God the Father and the Canaanite god of Baal. Baal, who was commonly associated with thunder and lightning, smoke, volcanic activity and fire, and also of fertility, had those commonalities with God the Father. As we see in Exodus 19, God comes down to on Mount Sinai in fire, and “as Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder.” Also, of fertility, God the Father, by telling Noah and Abram that he will make them great nations and commanding Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” He sets himself up as the the very source and cause of their ability to give birth and build their nation. But there are distinct and eternally significant differences between the God of all heaven and earth and other gods, whether they are from antiquity or from the present: God is the source of the law and the lawgiver. God is the point at which human existence begins and when it will end. He is the source of salvation. And the most impressive of all: he is the only god, ever, in human thought or mythology to offer himself as the sacrificial gift by which we may be saved.

While all the other gods require of us some effort, that something to make us worthy enough to enter into their holy places, God the Father assumes at the start that we aren’t worthy enough and never will be. Thus, he sent his son as a perfect sacrifice, as a replacement, to retell the disastrous fate that would have awaited us. But in the Gospel of John, we find Christ taking that awful burden on his own shoulders, not in some obligatory way, but freely, for our sake, all so that He may one day hear from us, “There is no other” god but God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

application

Read through Deuteronomy 4 and take note or write down all of the reasons Moses gives for the Israelites to know, without a doubt, that God the Father alone is worthy of their worship.