Wherefore thou art great, O LORD God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears. (2 Samuel 7:22)
One of the things I often see are “Coexist” bumper stickers on cars. People who put them on their cars have this belief that many different people worship many different gods, but what is most important is that we can all put aside our beliefs to coexist with each other. While their sentiment may be sincere, the problem is that when people believe different things, the very fact that they believe different things sooner or later will be exposed in how they conduct the affairs of their life. For some, raising children involves training them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord to live a holy life by inspiring them to love God and their neighbor because Christ first loved them (1 john 4:19). For others, raising children involves training them to fear their god and to kill others in his name along with mutilating their daughters so as to make certain practices unpleasurable. It becomes very apparent that if someone sincerely holds a faith in their version of a god that it will at some point cause conflict unless they compromise to the will of others above their god. For this reason, a coexist bumper sticker demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the position that man has before God.
In today’s Scripture, King David prayed to God because God had favored him and the nation of Israel, a nation that He redeemed from Egypt and from the other nations and their gods (1 Samuel 7:18-29). Likewise, God told the prophet Isaiah that He was the only God and Savior, that there were no Gods before Him and there were no Gods after Him (Isaiah 43:10-11; Isaiah 44:6; Isaiah 45:5-6; Isaiah 45:14-15). As the only God and Savior, that is how the God could say to Zechariah that He “will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10, Emphasis added). Paul wrote to Timothy that “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
No matter how you try and explain it, the Bible is very clear that there is one God and one Word of God (Deuteronomy 4:1-2; Proverbs 30:5-6; Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:24-25; Revelation 22:18-19). Not multiple variations that describe different gods that are available for the choosing. Salvation is by God’s grace, through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary, born as a baby, grew up to be a man and not once did He ever sin. Yet, because He did not sin, He did not have to die, because the Bible says, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Since He never sinned, He did not have to pay the wages of sin, but instead He willingly allowed Himself to be wrongfully crucified in the cross to pay for our wages of sin. Therefore, by trusting in Jesus and what He did for us, His payment for sin is applied to our account and we receive the gift of God, which is eternal life (Romans 6:23).
Finally, when it comes to the worship of the one true God, Jesus says that God is a Spirit and that we must worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:22-26). Later He said that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17-19). This means that we worship the one true God of the Bible in the Holy Spirit as the only way that will produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:21-22). Worship in any other way is described in the Bible as the worship of devils and not to God (1 Corinthians 10:20). Therefore one can look to the “C” crescent moon of Islam; the “o” of the nuclear disarmament peace sign; the “e” of the combined symbols of Mars and Venus representing male and female equality; the “x” of the Jewish Star of David; the “i” with the Pagan/Wiccan pentacle on top; and the ‘s” with the Taoist Yin Yang representing the opposite forces of nature. However, no matter how much anyone seeks redemption by God through any of these, it is only when you move on from them and trust at last what Jesus did on the “T” of the cross that you will experience coexistence the way God promises it will be.
