Reengaging the Spiritual IV
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The writing of the Bible began with Moses around 1450 BC and progressed throughout the centuries, eventually coming to completion around 300 BC. The Bible is an ancient text - and these authors had a drastically different worldview than we do - spiritually, physically and culturally. So our job as 21st Century Christians is to do our best to find their truths and apply them to our world. And that’s hard when we’re talking 2, 3, 4, 5,000 years ago.
Now each generation has done the best they could with the information they had at their time. Over the years, information gets lost, convoluted, misinterpreted - whatever. But, as technology, archeology and the history of language advances, and we learn new things, sometimes we discover that sometimes we got it right and other times we got it wrong. So, as we journey together to Reengage the Spiritual, be open to some subtle shifts and thinking in our theology.
Let’s start with a little test. I’m going to give you four belief systems (camps), and then you decide which theological camp the Bible teaches.
A) Henotheism - Worship of one god
B) Monolatry - Worship of one god without denial of the existence of other gods
C) Monotheism - Belief in one God
D) Polytheism - Belief and worship of many gods
I’ll answer that in a moment, but I would guess that most of us have been taught that we are monotheists. Mono = one. Theos = god. Monotheism - the belief in only one god. And somewhere along the way, Christians have come to interpret that the Judeo-Christian faith teaches monotheism - that there is only one God. And in some ways, that might make us feel superior - that we’re the wise ones and everyone else is foolish, because they believe in myths or gods that are make-believe. In some ways that’s true, we are the wise ones, but it’s not because other gods are make-believe.
I’m not certain how we came to believe in monotheism, because that’s not what the Bible teaches. Perhaps because the Bible tells us to worship one God - Yahweh in the Old and Jesus Christ in the New - of course Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh. The Bible never implies there is only one god that exists.
It might be time we reevaluate what “theological camp” we’re in, because the answer is
E) All the Above.
The Bible does not deny that there is only one Sovereign God and that we should worship Him only. But neither does it deny the existence of other lessor gods, and that people often do worship these gods - to their eternal damnation.
So we’re really are not monotheists.
If anything, we’re “monolaists” - we worship One God, while acknowledging that other gods and spiritual beings are real.
How do we come to that conclusion?
We go back to a Biblical understanding of spiritual things; specifically, what the Bible teaches about gods.
To do that, we need to focus on the Hebrew word for god - ʾělō·hîm, which is by far the most common word used for God and other spiritual beings - a little over 2,500 times in the OT.
By definition, ʾělō·hîm does not necessarily refer to One Sovereign Almighty being, as we often think. Elō·hîm is not even a name.
It’s more of an identity, or as some scholars say and for lack of a better term - a species - not in an inferior way, but for clarification.
In Scripture, there are several different meanings for the word ʾělō·hîm. For instance, ʾělō·hîm could refer to Yahweh - thee Sovereign God; could refer to gods, as in many ʾělō·hîm; could refer to a ghost or spiritual or heavenly beings - such as angels, demons, spirits, cherubim and so on; could refer to idols.
Look at this picture - notice that there are different fonts that represent different beings, but also notice they are all blue. So these Blue Beings, if you will, are all ʾělō·hîm. But also notice all ʾělō·hîm are in plural form (there’s many of each) except one - Yhwh. Even though Yhwh is an ʾělō·hîm, no other ʾělō·hîm is Yhwh. He is distinct - He is the only ʾělō·hîm who is sovereign, who is perfect, who is the Creator, who is the Savior, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present - no other above Him and so forth. Lastly, notice the green border - that’s the spiritual realm of existence.
Here’s an earthly example: we live here in Oregon, therefore we are Oregonians. But Estonians live where? Estonia (real place by the way) - a different part of the world. There are different kinds of Estonians – male, female, young and old, farmers, bankers, rich and poor, good and bad, and so forth – but none of those characteristics make them Estonian. What makes an Estonian an Estonian - their place of birth, where they reside. On occasion, a few might come to Oregon to help or interfere.
Of the 1.3 million Estonians - there is only one president. Is the president an Estonian? Yes. Are all the Estonians the president? No - there is only one - and it’s the same in the spiritual world - there is only one Yahweh, but they’re all ʾělō·hîm.
Let me recap here before we move on
1) Elō·hîm (god) is not a name:
Elō·hîm is not personal pronoun like Chad or Fernando.
2) Elō·hîm (god) is an identification
Elō·hîm is a divine or spiritual being that exists in the spiritual realm (green border). It’s more about where one resides more than anything else.
Let’s go through a few examples in Scripture. Just a reminder that LORD - all caps is Yhwh in Hebrew / God is ʾělō·hîm - sometime singular and sometimes plural depending on the sentence, which we’ll see here.
Exodus 3 - Moses and Yahweh are having this conversation via a burning bush. Israel was in captivity in Egypt, and God wants to send Moses back to Egypt to deliver Israel. Now the Egyptians worshipped many what … ʾělō·hîm (gods).
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
Why would they ask for His name? Remember, they are submersed in a polytheistic culture, and even began to worship some of those gods.
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.
Do you see what God is doing? He’s telling Moses, “Look there are a bunch of ʾělō·hîm - gods - out there (I created them) - but I alone am the ʾělō·hîm of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There are a bunch of Estonians out there, but I’m the president!”
And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’
“Look Pharaoh, you have all your ʾělō·hîm – well guess what - we have one too, and His name is Yahweh! We want to go worship our ʾělō·hîm, not yours. And if you don’t let us go, our ʾělō·hîm is going to womp on your ʾělō·hîm - kick some ʾělō·hîm booty? Don’t know if spiritual beings have booties …?
It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—
There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I hope you’re getting this - the Bible does not treat other gods or spiritual beings as make-believe.
The Bible conveys that other ʾělō·hîm are real spiritual beings that really exist, whom people really follow and really worship.
This also means that ʾělō·hîm can communicate with us.
We see examples of this throughout Scripture and we see it today through angels, spiritual guides, New Age, other religions … both good and bad.
You know what this means? It means Deut. 18 is not a joke - it’s real.
“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead,
Those are all means of contacting the other side, and why would God forbid that if these other ʾělō·hîm were make-believe?
One more example and we’ll close. In 1 Samuel 28, King Saul has been cut off from God because of disobedience - and so now he’s lost. He really wants to know the future, so he contacts none other than a medium - one who talks with spirits on the other side. Saul comes to this woman and says I want you to call up the prophet Samuel - and so she does.
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman said to Saul, “Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.” The king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a god coming up out of the earth.”
- what we would call a spirit of a dead person. She didn’t see something imaginary - she saw something real and it scared the Bee Gees out of her. It was an ʾělō·hîm.
Why is all this important to know? If we deny the existence of real gods and real spiritual beings …
1) We deny what Scripture teaches
2) We lose credibility with millions people who genuinely worship other gods
3) We lose credibility with people who genuinely encounter spiritual beings or have spiritual experiences.
If we blow them off and treat people like their whacked, we lose an opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and what Scripture teaches about such things.
What would happen if someone shared a spiritual experience with you and instead of giving them the blank stare, you said, “Really. Tell me more about that.” And they said, “Do you believe me?” And you said, “Yes, I believe you, because the Bible says it’s real.” What do you think would happen?
4) We diminish the seriousness of gospel
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
The adversary’s work is to lead people astray from Jesus Christ - and he often uses the worship of other gods as a means to deceive.
What’s the take home from this?
1. What is a new awareness for you?
2. How will this affect your prayers (especially in view of Eph. 6)?
3. How might this change your comfort level with spiritual things and conversations?
4. What changes might need to take place in my choice of entertainment or associations?
5. What might I need to change in regard to raising my children?