Old Testament Teaches There Is Only One God (Doctrinal Bible Church in Huntsville, Alabama)

Doctrinal Bible Church

Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom

Wednesday August 17, 2022

The Trinity Series: Old Testament Teaches There Is Only One God

Lesson # 3

Both the Old and New Testaments teach that God is one.

They teach monotheism.

They condemn any other views of God.

The teaching of the Bible rejects polytheism (belief in many gods), pantheism (the belief that the deity is the totality of things [God is all] and that the totality of things is deity [all is God]), and Gnosticism (the belief that emanating from God are lesser deities).

Scripture leaves no room for these other views.

The Bible demands that people worship the one true God and that they put away false gods (Exodus 20:3; Mark 12:29–30).

The classic passage of monotheism appears in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel!

The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!”

Deuteronomy 6:1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. (NIV)

In Jewish tradition this is called the Shema because of the first word in the verse (שְׁמַע [s̆emaʾ], “hear”) expresses the essential creed and duty of Israel.

This verse is learned by Jewish children.

It is said by the orthodox Jews as a prayer or confession of faith twice a day.

This verse emphasizes the uniqueness of Yahweh in that He is incomparable.

He is the only God to whom the attributes of deity really belong.

He is therefore worthy of His people’s love (v. 5).

This command also emphasizes the unity of Yahweh in the sense that He is numerically one.

He is not merely the first among the gods, as Baal in the Canaanite pantheon but rather He is the only God there is!

In other words, He alone is God.

This command rejects every view of God that is not monotheism.

There are several Old Testament passages which proclaim the same thing as Deuteronomy 6:4 (Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 4:35, 39; 1 Kings 8:60; Isaiah 43:10; 45:5-6).

The New Testament reaffirms the monotheism of the Old Testament.

The Lord Jesus Christ affirms Deuteronomy 6:4 in Mark 12:28-30.

He quotes from it in this passage.

In John 17:3, the Lord Jesus Christ called the Father “the only true God.”

The apostle Paul taught in Romans 3:29-30 that there is only one God.

He teaches this to the Corinthians as well in 1 Corinthians 8:5-6.

Paul teaches the Ephesians that there is “one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:6).

He tells Timothy that God desires all to be saved and then he writes, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

James taught “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19).

The New Testament presents God as three persons with one divine essence.

The emphasis is upon the different members of the Trinity and the work on behalf of sinful humanity rather than God is one.

However, the Old Testament’s emphasis is upon the unity of God.

We find in the Old Testament that when it speaks of God, it emphasizes that He is one in direct contrast to polytheistic environment and inclinations of the Old Testament covenant people and heathen which surrounded God’s covenant people.

It was only after the lapse of centuries, when faith in the unity of God could no more be uprooted in Israel, which came about after six centuries through the captivity in Babylon, after which polytheism was no more a temptation to Israel.

God revealed in the new covenant the plurality in the unity.

Jesus of Nazareth is presented in the New Testament as equal to the Father and the second member of the Godhead.

The Spirit is also presented as deity and not merely a force but rather a divine person.

Thus, we have the divine tri-unity revealing itself in the New Testament.

Now, in the Old Testament though the plurality of unity in the Godhead is not emphasized, the three persons of the Trinity do appear explicitly and implicitly.

The plurality of unity of God is also mentioned implicitly though not explicitly.

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (NIV)

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (NIV)

“Us” in each of these passages make clear that God refers to Himself as being more than one person.

In the Pentateuch, we have a mysterious figure appearing who is called the “angel of the Lord” and is identified as God Himself and with God.

This hints of a plurality of persons in God.

These appearances of God are called by theologians “theophanies” or “Christophanies,” which are theological terms used to refer to either a visible or auditory manifestation of the Son of God before His incarnation in Bethlehem (Gen. 32:29-30; Ex. 3:2; 19:18-20; Josh. 5:13-15; Dan. 3:26).

The first example of a Christophany or theophany in the Old Testament we will look at appears in Genesis 16, which records Hagar coming into contact with the angel of the Lord.

The fact that “the angel of the Lord” is not an angel but rather the preincarnate Christ is confirmed in Genesis 16:10 since only the Lord Jesus Christ who is omnipotent has the power to multiply Hagar’s descendants so that they are innumerable.

Also, only the Lord Jesus Christ who is omniscient could know every detail concerning the child who was in her womb and his descendants.

Genesis 18:1-8 records the appearance of the preincarnate Christ and two elect angels before Abraham and in turn, Abraham showing hospitality to them.

In this passage, the Lord reveals His omniscience in that He asks Abraham as to why Sarah laughed when she laughed to herself, inaudibly rather than audibly.

Also, there was Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32:28.

The angel of the Lord appearing to Moses in the burning bush is also another theophany or Christophany (Exodus 3).

That the Son of God Himself is introducing Himself to Moses in this chapter is indicated by the fact that this “angel” refers to Himself as both Lord (Exodus 3:2, 4, 5, 7, 16, 18) and God (Exodus 3:4-6, 11-16, 18).