Getting the right God

by John Fischer
The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional

Jesus said that those who worship God worship him is spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)

The truth he’s referring to here would mean getting the right God.

Throughout the Old Testament, idolatry was the most reoccurring sin of God’s people, which is, the worship of the wrong god. The first of the Ten Commandments has to do with this: “I am the Lord your God who rescued you from slavery in Egypt . Do not worship any other gods besides me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)

Does this mean there are a bunch of other gods running around out there competing for our attention, and we have to somehow pick the right one? No. The Bible is very clear about there being only one God. The other supposed gods are substitutes. They are things (they can be people) that we substitute for the one living God.

We usually set up substitute gods because we want a god we can control, or, as in the case of setting up a person as a god, we want a god in complete control of us. The true God makes you think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. The true God doesn’t spell out every detail for you. We set up our authoritarian gods to do these things for us so we don’t have any responsibility. The true God doesn’t want robotic obedience. He wants a relationship.

But how do you know if you have the right God? The passage quoted above gives us a really big clue. “I am the Lord your God who rescued you from slavery in Egypt .” For the children of Israel , this was a dead ringer. No pagan god ever rescued them from anything, much less slavery in Egypt . This is very specific. No other god took them miraculously across the Red Sea, through the wilderness, across the Jordan River , and into the Promised Land. This description of God left no doubt.

What about you and me? What God freed us from slavery to sin and took us out of a place of bondage to it? What God came to earth in space and time and lived and died on a cross in order to do this? What God took us out of one place that was harmful to us and brought us into another place for our good?

The same things that identified God to his followers in the Old Testament identify him to us today. He existed in time and space (we read, study, and learn about him from his Word); and he affected our lives in a real way (he freed us from sin). We worship today a living, historical God who has changed our lives. Only one God can do that. Worship him.