We are desperate for God. My name is Timothy, and I'm a handyman. I fix things and build things. Yet I'm also a pastor, and I'm laboring to rebuild the wall of historic Christian doctrine for the sake of the church. I pray that you will join me in the work. God is one. There is one God. He alone is eternal, immortal, and invisible. God is he who alone is wise. He alone is self-sufficient, and that infinitely so. And he dwells in unapproachable light. No man has seen or can see Him in the full brightness of His eternally divine glory. There is one God who is the God of Holy Scripture, the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who is the God, not of the philosophers, but of the Jewish fishermen, the God of Peter and James and John, is the only God, there are no other gods. To Him alone belong honor and everlasting power, amen. How then shall we know God? This is the only true gain in all of life. The knowledge of God is the only true gain of the human soul. All other questions and pursuits are nothing. They are surely empty and meaningless when compared with the beyond-surpassing excellence of the question of knowing God himself. This, then, is how we know God. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. We know God by knowing His exclusive oneness. That is to say, the oneness of God necessarily excludes all other gods. He is not to be included with the gods of the idolatrous nations. Those gods are false gods, even lifeless gods. He is known then in part by the infinite contrast between his holy living glory and the evil dead deceptions of the idols of the nations. Exodus 20, verses two through three, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. In Deuteronomy 32, verse 39, now see that I, even I am he, and there is no God besides me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, nor is there any who can deliver from my hand. There may be an abundance of trees amongst the nations that promise deceptively to offer life. but the gospel of God is the only true tree of eternal life. Also, there are many cisterns amongst the peoples and cultures of the world that deceive the multitudes with their offers of living water, but they are all broken cisterns that can hold no water. It is Jesus Christ alone who can offer the wellspring of the Holy Spirit and thus the true living waters from which a man may drink and never thirst again. God is one. And thus the false gods of the nations are imposter gods. As the prophet Isaiah records the words of the Lord God of Israel in Isaiah 43, 11, I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior. And Isaiah 44, verse six, thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last, besides me there is No God. And again, Isaiah 45, verse five, I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. The prophet Elijah summoned the prophets of Baal to the contest. Their altar, the one they made for Baal, was dry and the wood was thus easily ignitable. Yet as they danced frantically and cut themselves wickedly, calling upon the false god Baal to hear them, the wood remained unlit, and they received no answer to their cries. Yet before Elijah prayed to the Lord, he soaked the wood on his altar with 12 large pots of water, such that the altar and the trench around it were saturated and filled with water. And thus the prospect of a fire on Elijah's altar to the Lord was humanly speaking, quite impossible. Then Elijah prayed to the one God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And the Lord God sent fire from heaven that consumed the sacrifice, wood, stones, dust, and all, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And all the people cried, 1 Kings 18.39, the Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. The Lord is the one God. He alone created the heavens and the earth. He and no other demonstrated his glory by bringing his people Israel out from under Pharaoh's cruel tyranny, even fighting for his people and thus destroying the power of Egypt and casting Pharaoh and his army into the depths of the sea. And all of this with the divine power of his mighty hand and outstretched arm. Hosea 13 verse four, yet I am the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt and you shall know no God but me for there is no savior besides me. Oh, how we long for the one God and yet he shall not be known apart from the knowledge of his son, Jesus Christ. for his exclusive glory is revealed only through the Lord Jesus. Matthew 11, 27, all things have been delivered to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son and the one to whom the son wills to reveal him. And as the apostle Peter preached the gospel of God in Acts 4, 12, nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." The children of this present evil generation have been taught in their school systems to prize multicultural awareness. With regard to other gods, they have been indoctrinated in a vision of the world that sees the gods of the nations through various social and cultural lenses of deep respect and treats them with great deference. And so the proliferation of Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, and Mormon church buildings in America is now viewed as a multicultural beautification of American freedoms. Few today have the prophetic boldness to denounce the idols as abominable in the sight of God. What then shall we say of the churches of America and their friendship with false gods? When the church members bring the gods of the nations and the ways of the unbelievers into the churches, we shall say that they are practicing their worship in a way that is an outright rebellion against the one God. They may worship in the name of Jesus Christ, but their friendship with the world and participation in the cup of demons betrays their rebellion against the one God. Oh, dear children of the faith, even the faith that has been delivered once for all to the saints, The Lord summons us to fear Him. We are called by the Spirit of Christ to repent of all friendship with the world and to fear the one God. Return then to the fear of Him. Fear His divine jealousy, for Christ has a jealous, exclusive, marital covenant with the church. And his jealousy as a husband is full of divine fire and fury. He shall not give his glory to another nor his praise to other gods. Beloved saints, worship the one God. Even the one who slew Nadav and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, with a wrathful fire, since they brought the worship of idols into the holy courts of his tabernacle. Worship him acceptably with fear and trembling. Oh, dear children, keep yourselves from idols. We seek to know the one God. This is the vision of our hearts as given to us by the Holy Spirit, for it is the very vision of the coming kingdom of heaven. Zechariah 14, verses eight through nine. And in that day, it shall be that living water shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them towards the Eastern Sea and half of them toward the Western Sea. In both summer and winter, it shall occur and the Lord shall be king over all the earth. And in that day, it shall be, the Lord is one and his name, one. We cannot therefore keep ourselves from crying out for more of Christ to dwell in our hearts. For without Christ and without a truly repentant, submissive, and obedient worship to Christ and worship of Christ, the knowledge of the one God is a dead knowledge. It is even a condemning knowledge. James 2.19, you believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. So our hunger then is for Christ. Our thirst is for him. We ask for more of Christ. Seek for more of his word and knock earnestly on the door of the knowledge of him. For the gospel is, to be sure, the gospel of the one God. But this must be understood as the gospel of the one God revealed in Christ, in the one Christ. And thus, to know God is to know and adore his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 8, 4-6, Therefore, concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live. We were sinful men. Formerly we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Being by nature children of wrath, we once walked just as the pagans do. in fornications, uncleanness, passions, evil desires, and the idolatry of many covetous ways. Yet the one God washed us and cleansed us through the one high priest of our souls, even the one advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous. His one sacrifice of blood, all the way to death on the cross, for by grace we have been saved, has reconciled us to the Father. 1 Timothy 2, 5-6, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. Is the one God then modalistic? Does he, as some so blasphemously assert, change hats and pretend to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in different seasons? May it never be. The one God is the triune God of the scriptures. There are eternal distinctions of persons within the triune Godhead. God eternally exists in three distinct persons. Just as the ancient creeds heralded Him. Yet does this triune mystery nullify the oneness of the divine essence? Once again, may it never be. For Christ is not lesser in essence than the Father. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, the Word was with God and the Word was God. For as our Lord Jesus declared in John 10 verse 30, I and my Father are one. Oh, to know the one God by knowing more of the one Christ. We meditate then upon the pre-creation glory of Christ, in which he shared divine glory with the Father before the foundation of the world. We ponder with all awe and reverence His transcendent glory. For Christ is glorified far above the heavens and the earth, and His authority and power are infinitely far above every rule and power and authority in the heavenly realms. Our hearts sing for joy at his ineffable glory, for the one Christ is one with the eternal Father. And thus the brightness of his countenance is so eternally bright that it shall make the sun and moon obsolete in the new Jerusalem, which is the heavenly Mount Zion. We bow then with tears of love and flowing tears of joy as we remember the one Lamb who is slain for sins and who thus is worthy of all of the divine honors and praises of all of the angels and prophets and apostles and saints in the kingdom of heaven and there in the everlasting kingdom. All who fear Him, both small and great, shall adore him and shout the triumphal shout concerning his greatness, worshiping the one Father through the grace of our one Lord Jesus in the joy of the one Spirit. For in the kingdom The one Lord, one faith, one baptism of the gospel of Jesus that we find in Ephesians 4, 5, shall bring us into the everlasting worship of the one God and Father who is above all and through all, and who thus dwells among us all. and shall be glorified by all. And so may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit Be with us all now and forevermore. Amen.