“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
My father died on Valentine’s Day. It was a very sad moment for me, because the Lord was not his God. The day before he went into hospice, never to really be clearheaded again, I had an hour and a half of time with him, one on one, and we talked about this exact topic, among other things. I urged him to make God his God. But he would not, and he passed through the doorway of death into a Christ-less and Godless eternity, as far as we know. There is no reason to think otherwise.
Serving Idols
His entire life had been lived for other gods, the false gods of the land, the idols of our day. He was not a bad person. Most would say he was a good person, kind, gentle, friendly to all. He was very smart and did well in school and in business. He married and had children – I am his oldest of three sons. Later in his life, after both of my grandfathers were gone, he divorced our mother, to marry a woman half his age. It turns out he had been having affairs for quite some time, and the woman that he was currently fooling around with gave him an ultimatum, which he took. After that decision, he continued to make additional bad decisions, until at the end of his life, he concluded that death was his best option, so he chose to go into hospice rather than dialysis, and now he is gone. So what happened? Where did he go wrong? A smart good-looking guy, with a great family, a great job, plenty of intelligence. What went wrong?
But God
Somewhere along the way, before I was even born, he lost his faith in God, if he ever had it to begin with. When I came into the world, he was an atheist Jew, occasionally going to Temple to make my grandparents happy. My brothers and I went as well, we learned Hebrew and were Bar Mitzvah, etc. But we carried his atheism in our lives as well, just as he, and our Reformed Rabbi had taught us. “There is no God”, we were taught. And we believed them, so we lived according to the ways of the world, according to the idols of the day, rather than for God. Serving the false gods of our present day Egypt, we were slaves in the house of Pharaoh, just like our ancestors, just like our Dad and Rabbi.
But God – Ephesians Chapter 2:1-9.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
(Ephesians 2:1-9)
God intervened in my life when I was in college, and I was born again. My life was never the same. God became my God, and I his son. I was changed so dramatically over the next decades by God’s Holy Spirit working thru God’s word in my life, that people who knew me before, and hear about me now, cannot believe that it is the same person. I have literally been transformed, and continue to be transformed, by the renewing of my mind, as Romans 12:1-2 says. What does it mean for the Lord to be our God, and for the Lord to be one?
Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad!
“Hear O’Israel, the Lord our God, The Lord is one.” These are God’s words to us. It is called the Sh’ma in Hebrew. Almost every Jew in the world knows it by heart, or at least should. But do they believe it, do they live by it, or are they like my Dad, in denial, serving other false gods? He said the Sh’ma his entire life. Did he believe it? Did he live it out? It has been said that we do what we want to do in life, ultimately. We act on our true beliefs, not on what we say necessarily. If God is our God, our one and only God, then our life will reflect this in our actions, our decisions, etc. Every aspect of our life will testify eventually of whether or not God is our one and only God, or if we have others.
We may profess to be Christians and believe in God, but if we are cheating on our spouse, we have another god that we are listening to as well. We do not just have one god. We have at least two in this case. Or maybe we claim to be followers of Jesus, but feel gay marriage is okay, even though God makes it perfectly clear that marriage is only between one man and one woman. Abortion, no-fault divorce, greed, lust, careerism, evolutionism, worship of family, worship of possessions, worship of money, power, comfort, etc. – there are many false gods in the world today. They abound. The list would be pages long if we tried to list them all here. As a comparison, abortion is like the child sacrifice to Molech that we read about in the pages of scripture, just more sanitized and done in a clinic with knives rather than on an altar with fire. Sacrificing our children to the god of sex.
One God.
The first commandment is you shall have no other gods but Me. God said this to Moses. And it is where we often go wrong. We do not make God our God, and in God’s place we worship the false gods of our day. The Hebrews were coming out of Egypt, a land whose people served many false gods, and they were going into Canaan, where the people also served many false gods. God is warning the Hebrews, just as He warns us, to not go after the false gods of the land. Today God is warning us, as Christians, that we are going to be living in a land where the people have many false gods, and He warns us to avoid them as well, just as He warned the Hebrews. One God, no others.
Many people question the trinity at this point, and much has been written on this. Briefly, Echad is a composite oneness, like three strands that make one rope. God is God the Father, seated in heaven, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. Jesus is God incarnate, God walking among us, a man, the image of God for us to see. (John 14:7-15) He is now seated at the right hand of the Father, but for a short time He walked among us and taught us about God – amazing if you think about it – that God actually became one of us so He could better interact with us. Jesus is the image of God, the action of God, God in the flesh. And the Holy Spirit is the part of God that indwells those who believe, to help us and to lead us as we live our lives. The Spirit is like the voice of God, the power of God, the leading of God in our lives. He helps us.
It is all God, just manifest in different ways in order to accommodate us. Like the cloud by day and the fire by night when the Hebrews were fleeing from Egypt, God manifests Himself as needed so that we can follow Him. But it’s pretty hard to get up close and personal with a pillar of fire or a cloud. So God became a man, so that we could get up close and personal, so that He could get up close and personal with us. But men don’t live on this earth forever, so God gave us the Holy Spirit once Jesus left, so we have God all of the time once we are born again. His Spirit is with us always. There are many books on the trinity, as well as online articles that go much deeper than I have gone here, so please feel free to do your own study on this if you need more info on this.
Our God.
Not only must we acknowledge that there is only the one true God, but we must make God our own. “The Lord our God.” We make Him ours by faith. Before Messiah came, this was done thru temple worship. When Jesus was here, he made some changes, and opened the door to everyone – to anyone who believes in Him.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
Faith in Jesus is all that is required for God to become our God now. Jesus is the only way for God to become “our” God:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
John 14:6
Jesus is the way to God, for the Lord to become “our” God. When God is our God, that means we belong to Him. He owns us. The Bible says that we have been bought with a price:
For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:20
God bought us, and the payment was the sacrifice of His son on the cross. We enter into this relationship by faith.
Our Father
When we believe in Jesus, we are born again, and we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. He is now our Father and we are His sons. Jesus even told us to refer to Him as Father when He taught us to pray (Matthew 6:9-13). Our earthly fathers might abandon us or disappoint us, but our heavenly Father will never abandon, never let us down, never forsake us, or leave us alone. He is always with us. We are in His hand always, and nothing can snatch us out of it or separate us from God’s love. In Romans 8 we read:
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written,“
“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:28-39
Our Reason to Live
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. When the Lord is our God, to the exclusion of all of the other false gods, we are placing our life in His care. Our reason for living is no longer placed in anything here on earth. It is “hidden with Christ in God” now (Colossians 3:3), and nothing can take it away. When the world and old age took away the things that my earthly father lived for, he no longer wanted to live. When God is our reason for living, when our life is in Him, our reason for living is safe and nothing can take it away. Nothing can take away our will to live. There is an old saying regarding the persecution of the Chinese church that I heard a preacher share once – it goes something like this:
“If you threaten me and tell me not to preach, I will reply, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) If you mock me and beat me, I “will rejoice that I have been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.” (Acts 5:41) If you take away all that I have, I will say, “I count all things loss for the sake of Christ.” (Phil 3:8) If you arrest me and throw me in prison, and I will share my faith with the other prisoners and convert them and all your guards to Christianity. (Acts 16:22-34) If you torture me, I will say you have given me “the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” (James 1:12) If you kill me, I will say, I go to be with my Savior, for “to live is Christ, to die is gain!” (Phil 1:21)
(Author Unknown)
When the Lord is our God, we never lose the will to live because we realize that we are already dead. We “have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)” The Sh’ma is about armoring our life against all things, even death. God commands us to have no other gods because of the damage they will eventually do to us, and to the lives of the people around us. There is nothing in the Bible that is not there for a good reason, and this includes the Sh’ma. God has our best interest at heart. He wants what is best for us. And he starts out by telling us that the best thing for us is for our life to be built on Him and Him alone.
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
Matthew 7:24-27
Is the Lord Your God
Have you taken that step of faith yet? Is the Lord your God? Are you serving other gods, the gods of the land? They are cruel, heartless gods who will eventually sacrifice you and all that you love on their altar, just as dad was. I kid you not. You think I am joking, exaggerating, going too far – I am not. I just watched it happen, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Don’t let it happen to you. I urge you to turn from your idols and serve the Lord, the one true God. When Jesus was here, He said:
“So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
John 10:7-10
Jesus is the way into a relationship with God, just as a door is the way into a house. He is the only way into the Father. The only way to make the Lord our God. The only way to keep the Sh’ma. It is not complicated. All we have to do is believe. If you are ready to take this step, and armor your life against even death, guaranteeing yourself eternity with God, please join me in this prayer:
Lord God almighty, I have sinned against you and served the false gods of my day. I repent, and turn away from these false gods, and I turn to You, the one and only true God. Let me come in to You by way of your Son Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Enable me to walk through the Door, Jesus Christ, into a relationship with you. I want to do this today. I want to be free from serving the false gods and idols of my past. I want to serve you now. I want to be free in Christ to know you. I now say that “The Lord is my God, my one and only God.” There are no other true gods. You alone are God. Thank you for this moment in my life. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
And whose trust is the Lord.”
Jeremiah 17:7
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