There is No Other

Scripture: Deuteronomy 4: 32-40

Sermon: There is No Other

Topics: idolatry, exclusive, church, inclusive

Preached: September 15, 2019

Rev. Mike Abma

Deuteronomy 4: 32-40

For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other:

has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of?

 ³³Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? 

³⁴Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 

³⁵To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him. 

³⁶From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, while you heard his words coming out of the fire. ³⁷And because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants after them. He brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, ³⁸driving out before you nations greater and mightier than yourselves, to bring you in, giving you their land for a possession, as it is still today. 

³⁹So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. ⁴⁰Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

Last week Pastor Bryant told us that, in many ways, Deuteronomy is one long sermon given to God’s people before entering the Promised Land.

After the service last week, Randy Bytwerk reminded me that John Calvin really liked the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, in the course of about 16 months in 1555 – 1556, John Calvin preached 200 sermons on Deuteronomy – now that is a sermon series!

John Calvin preached 12 sermons on Deuteronomy 4 alone.

Why 12 sermons on Deuteronomy 4?

I think it is because this chapter is so pivotal to the rest of the book.

In many ways,

the end of this chapter gives the theological heartbeat

of everything that follows.

The end of this chapter dwells on God —

the God who spoke to and delivered his people in the past,

is the God who speaks to and delivers us still.

And who is this God?

He is the creator of all things.

He is the one who made us in his image.

He is the one who revealed himself

by speaking out of the fire of a burning bush.

He is the one who delivered a whole nation out of slavery.

This is the God of our creation.

This is the God of our redemption.

This passage calls on God’s people to take a stand

and to confess their faith:

to acknowledge that this God,

of heaven above and the earth beneath

is the one and only Lord – there is no other.

ACKNOWLEDGING GOD — ON THE INSIDE & THE OUTSIDE

This confession of faith has to be both internal and external.

We need to be willing to acknowledge it on the outside,

but also take it to heart on the inside.

Let’s start with taking it to heart on the inside – what does this mean?

The greatest temptation back in the time of Deuteronomy

remains the greatest temptation today.

It is the temptation of idolatry.

And those of us who call ourselves Christians

have our own unique form of idolatry.

We try to co-opt God for our own purposes.

We try put God in a box.

We live with a very fixed

and very predictable view of God.

But here is the problem:

Our God always agrees with us;

Our God always supports our views;

In fact, our God often becomes our most faithful cheerleader.

As was said earlier in the service,

we create God in our own image.

We develop a domesticated view of God.

We develop a controllable view of God.

But this is not the God of the Bible.

The God revealing Himself in Deuteronomy 4

speaks out of fire.

The God of heaven and earth

cannot be contained by our puny minds,

and cannot be controlled by our selfish wills.

The God who created and redeems all things

is so much bigger than we can imagine,

and so much greater than we can conceive.

The reason God reveals himself to us

is to unsettle us,

to jar us,

and to liberate us from all the things that

enslave us and entrap us.

God reveals himself to us

in order to transform us

so that we live

new lives, better lives, more holy lives.^[1]

That is the first thing this passage tells us:

We need to acknowledge in our hearts,

that God is God

and we are not.

This may sound obvious, perhaps even simplistic,

but it is, in fact, the greatest spiritual challenge

of each and every one of us.

ACKNOWLEDGING GOD – ON THE OUTSIDE

This passage also tells us

that we must acknowledge that the Lord is God

on the outside.

We must acknowledge that the Lord is God

in how we live,

in how we make decisions,

in how we relate to others and treat others….

there is much to say here, but this will be the theme of future sermons.

What we need to simply realize this morning is that this passage is a call for God’s people to confess their faith

both on the inside and on the outside.

THERE IS NO OTHER

We make this confession of faith

acknowledging that the Lord is God, the only true God,

and there is no other.

There is No Other.

That is a phrase that … looks and sounds so exclusive, doesn’t it?

There is No Other.

We know what many will say in response to that phrase:

It sounds so arrogant.

It sounds so intolerant.

It sounds like what is so wrong in the world.

That kind of language just makes things worse, not better.

And I shall be totally honest here,

there is some truth to this critique.

Just look at Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy is followed by the book of Joshua.

And we know what happens in the book of Joshua.

Israel comes and pushes out those who do not believe in this one true God.

So doesn’t that just prove that

exclusive religious claims

almost always lead to violent, oppressive conflicts?^[2]

As I said, these are valid questions and concerns.

Anyone who knows any history

knows that narrow religious claims

have led to all kinds of misery on this earth.

So how do we hear this call in Deuteronomy to acknowledge

that the Lord is God, and there is no other?

Let me offer two responses:

The first is to hear it with a posture of humility.

We read a book like Joshua,

with all its violence,

and we immediately want to become the judge of God.

God suddenly does not fit nicely into our safe little box,

so we are tempted to read the Bible Marcion-style:

“I don’t like this God of the Old Testament,

so I’ll just stick to the God of the New Testament.”

This is just picking and choosing what we like and do not like.

This is not humbling ourselves before

the God of heaven and earth.

To humble ourselves before God involves wrestling with Him and his often hard and difficult truths.

Now to the second point. Since we are now talking about Joshua, we do need to talk about the New Joshua – for Joshua is simply the Hebrew name for Jesus.

Exclusive claims are not just an Old Testament thing.

Jesus himself said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

That sounds pretty exclusive.

And in Acts 4, when Peter and John are defending themselves before the Jewish Sanhedrin, they bluntly said,

“the stone that was rejected, has become the cornerstone.

There is salvation in no one else.

There is no other name under heaven by which we are saved.”

There is no other name by which we are saved.

That sounds pretty exclusive too.

THE EARLY CHURCH — THE PARADOX

If you know your early church history,

You know that the early church stuck to that exclusive message —

that there is no other name by which we are saved than the name of Jesus.

In fact, this is what got them into the most trouble.

I can still remember the first time I read Ramsey McMullin’s

book Christianizing the Roman Empire.

McMullin, a Yale University history professor,

makes it very clear

that the one thing the Roman Empire disliked most

about the Christians was their exclusive claim

that salvation is only in the name of Jesus.

Why couldn’t these Christians be like everybody else?

Everybody else had their own little, limited religion –

this religion for this tribe; that religion for that tribe.

That was the culture back then – many peoples, many religions.

But the Greco-Roman culture was also a culture of huge differences:

There were huge differences

if you were a Roman citizen or not a citizen;

huge differences if you were rich or poor;

huge differences if you were noble or plebeian;

huge differences if you were male or female;

huge differences if you were free or a slave.

huge differences depending on the language you spoke –

if you spoke the Empire’s language or were a barbarian.

Now here is the great paradox of the early Church:

Yes, they had an exclusive faith:

They believed in the one and only God;

They believed in the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ.

But they were absolutely welcoming and open to everyone,

regardless of who they were or what they believed in.

The Christians welcomed people of every race and tribe and language;

The Christians brought together people of every economic level,

the rich, the poor, the merchant class, all together.

The Christians ministered to the poor, the sick, the oppressed,

whether they were believers or not.

The reason they did all this is because they believed that everyone,

absolutely everyone, had to be treated with

dignity, honor, and respect.

This is the paradox, isn’t it?

Yes, we have an exclusive belief system,

but that belief system pushes us,

and compels us, not only to be open to others,

but to love them, all of them, even if they are enemies.

We live like this because we follow Jesus –

who taught us to love our enemies,

and to show forgiveness to those who have hurt us.

TONY KRIZ

So how do we live out our confession —

that the Lord is God, there is no other –

how do we live that out today?

I read about Tony Kriz, who is a chaplain on a University campus.

He writes that it doesn’t really work to simply proclaim,

“Jesus is the only way.”

It works much better to ask questions something like this:

“Have you ever considered how foundational

the Bible and Jesus are

for so many values we take for granted:

things like the dignity of each person;

things like the true meaning of justice;

things like the importance of forgiveness?

Have you ever asked yourself,

can we even be good without God?”^[3]

CONCLUSION

People of God

acknowledge

in your hearts and in your lives

that the Lord is God – there is no other.

Stand amazed that this God

out of his great mercy

chose us to be his people;

That he saved us from ourselves

by the death and resurrection of his Son.

Lead deeply grateful lives for,

though we do not deserve it at all,

we have been given the gift of grace – God’s grace.

Work and pray and hope

that every single person on this planet

also knows Jesus Christ,

and knows that they are loved and saved by him.

This is not just a modern version of our faith.

This is not just a nice version of our belief.

This goes to the heart of who we are.

Remember I mentioned at the beginning that John Calvin preached 200 sermons on Deuteronomy, and that he preached 12 sermons on chapter 4 alone?

Well, in his 9^th sermon on this chapter,

a sermon on our very passage this morning,

a sermon focusing on the call to acknowledge our faith

in the one and only God, for there is no other,

do you know how John Calvin ended that sermon?

He ended his sermon with this hope:

May it please God

to grant this grace not only to us,

but also to all the peoples and nations of the earth.^[4]

May it please God

to grant this grace not only to us,

but also to all the peoples and nations of the earth.

Isn’t that a beautiful and wonderfully inclusive prayer?

Yes, our faith, our worship, our devotion has a very narrow focus,

but our hope, our desires, our ministries, our prayers,

have a very wide embrace.

Amen

PRAYER

Holy God,

We bow before you, our creator and our redeemer.

We praise you name, for you are the Lord of all,

And we pray for the day

Every knee bows and every tongue confesses

That you are Lord

Amen

1. See Walter Brueggemann, “The Case for an Alternate Reading,” in Theological Education, Spring 1987. ↑

2. For a fuller answer to this concern, see Tim Keller, The Reason For God chapter 1: There Can’t Just Be One True Religion pp. 3-21. ↑

3. See Tony Kriz, “When the Only Way is the Wrong Play” in Leadership Journal, June 18, 2015. ↑

4. John Calvin, “27^th Sermon, the 9^th on Deuteronomy 4 preached June 4, 1555,” in Sermons on Deuteronomy, on the monergism.com website. ↑