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The question which dogged Israel for over 1000 years was not "Is there a God?", but "Who is God?". They would not deny it was a supernatural force that had miraculously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, from the Sea which blocked their path, from starvation and thirst in a desert existence, and most of all from self-destruction by the provision of the Law which prevented them going back to the jungle and destroying each other.They could not deny that this homeland of theirs was indeed a land flowing with streams and rivers, and milk and honey - a good fruitful land which they called their home. But in that green and pleasant land there were thousands of people who had farmed the land for years and who lived by the rule that the God who made crops grow provided rain and fruitfulness was the god of productivity called Baal.
That was the issue: not "is there a God?", but "Who is God?"
The same question ever confronts the modern world, which likes to say "Is there a God" when really it means "Who is God?", and usually they come up with the solution that the only god worthy of total sacrifice and adoration is the same god of productivity. Only the name has been changed from Baal to Mammon. Money, and the power it purchases: money and the so-called success it guarantees. Again and again the truly God-inspired men of the prophets of Israel confronted the golden idols of their fellows with the words "There is one God.He is the God who provides everything. He is the 'out-of'-Egypt-bringing' God, the one and only Saviour of human kind, and all else in creation, and who loves you.
This is from Hosea who is speaking of his unfaithful wife who was the veritable role model of unfaithful Israel:
She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold - which they used for Baal. Hosea 2:8
A Prayer:
From the worship of everything and anything which is not you, Lord God deliver us, your faithless people.
Now read Deuteronomy Chapter 8.
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