One God or Many

^{Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC on October 26th and 27th, 2019}

^NRS Deuteronomy 32:17 They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared. (Deut. 32:17 NRS)

^NRS Exodus 20:1 Then God spoke all these words: ² I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³ you shall have no other gods before me. ⁴ You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, (Exod. 20:1-5 NRS)

Today we are going to explore the question that was asked, is there more than one God? Or put in another way, are the God’s of the ancient world the same as the God of Israel, the God the Christian church worships? I had youth years ago, that came back from an English class where the teacher had told them that the Christian God was no different than the Greek and Roman mythological Gods and was not real. So today, we are going to explore that concept and light of the scripture that you heard today.

So is there more than one God? The Bible certainly indicates that God believes that we think so. God does not say, I am the only God. Rather what we glean from the scripture is that God is acknowledging that we have other God’s. Therefore, God says to us that we are not to set any of them as more important than the God of Israel, Abraham and each of us. That God is a jealous God and will not have us worshiping these other deities. If God acknowledges other God’s, then who might they be and where did they come from?

Every ancient culture has its understanding of God. Whether we are talking about the Hindu people and Buddha, Krishna and Shiva, the Greeks with Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite, the Romans with Jupiter, Mars and Venus, the Egyptians with Osiris and Re and the Norse people with Odin and Thor, all of them have deities they revered as God. Some of the them, in fact, most of them were creatures with powers beyond that of humans, they reside in places not of the earth though they frequent the places where humans exist and they interact with humans in mostly malevolent or mischievous ways.

The Bible also shares the names of other God’s as we encounter the people who inhabit the land where the people of Israel go. There is Baal, the God of the Canaanites, Ashur, the God of the Assyrians, Marduk the God of the Babylonians and Moloch another one the Canaanite Gods. In fact, there are quite a number of God’s mentioned in the old and new testaments.

There are in the stories of the ancient world, numerous names for the supreme God, the one central figure often associated with creation itself. Ahone is the God creator of the Powhatan people who populated this part of the country long before Caucasian people arrived here. Makemake is the creator of the Polynesian people while Huracan not only created the Mayan people and all the earth but also called forth a flood when displeased with the people that Huracan created.

In Exodus, God, Yahweh, or Jehovah decrees that God will execute all the God’s of Egypt. Now some might suggest that God is talking about human beings since Pharaohs and then Caesar self-proclaimed themselves God’s. In this passage, God implies that God is not the only God but that God will conquer all the others. Since Human beings die, this clearly is an indication of some other type of being. In Isaiah, we are introduced to a cosmic battle that takes place before time itself and there is one who seems to be above the rest, the Shining One or the son of Dawn. We know this figure as Satan but we will return to this a little later.

So where does that leave us? Clearly the world has known God’s, whether they are deities that were created from their own minds trying to explain things they could not understand. Or as some say, all mythology is based on some basis of fact; there is in fact beings that we humans have interpreted as God’s that interact with human beings in the past and maybe in the present as well. Is there one more important than the others or are they all the same as the English teacher once told some of my youth?

Here is a matter of faith and then another theory. We believe in the one Trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. As a matter of our historical interaction that we learn about through scripture, this One God, called Yahweh, Jehovah, Lord, etc. is in fact the God of creation. Why other cultures decidedly use other names might well be how their historical traditions received that information and from whom.

Which leads us to another theory that is biblically supported. If we were to meet an Angel, what would we think? In the Bible, when human beings interacted with angels they were in such awe that they bowed down to them only to be told to rise up, that they were not to be worshipped but simply messengers of God. So we then are to think that if we suddenly were in the presence of an angel that we would think them a God. What then about the peoples who populated the earth thousands of years ago. Is it possible that many of the God’s are simply angels that for whatever reason enjoyed the worship of human beings so much that they created different versions of creation, different understandings of God and yes, different cultures where humans worshipped them rather than the one True God? Is it not possible that all of the stories of different God’s are simply Angels of God’s creation that interacted with human beings?

In Genesis and Ezekiel, there are references to the Nephilim. These are the offspring of Angels and human beings. The scriptures indicate that they had powers that exceeded those of normal human beings. Here this from Genesis 6: “When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” Is it possible that these are the giants that the spies that Moses sent into the Promised Land saw? In Ezekiel the word that is often translated into Nephilim is often also translated into fallen. So we would understand that the Sons of God would in fact be the fallen after the great cosmic battle of good and evil. If that were true, who are these angels? They are the angels, created by God that desired to be God. They follow the Son of Dawn, we know as Satan. And they were thrown down from heaven and given dominion or power and control of the world, we live in. They are a mischievous bunch who believe their role is to convince you and me that they are God, that their answers are true and that we are to ignore the Words of the One True God. Hmmmmm! Doesn’t this sound a lot like the Greek, Roman and Norse God’s of old.

My friends, I hope that I have given you much to think about today. God tells us that there are other God’s. Some of them are the things we worship like money and material things, idols in sports and entertainment. Some of them might well be the fallen who work in the world to subvert the efforts of God to bring love into fulfillment in your life and mine. But regardless of what you come to believe, there is only one True God of creation, redemption, sustaining power who gave of God to become human, went to the cross, and gave up that human life so that you and I may know love for eternity.