About this sermon
Deuteronomy 13 warns Israel: if a prophet or dreamer arises and gives a sign that comes true, yet says, “Let us go after other gods,” they must not listen. The Lord is testing whether they love him with all their heart, and the same holds when the tempter is a brother, a son, a wife, or a friend. To abandon the Lord was to abandon the Savior who had already rescued them from Egypt. In the new covenant the test of any teacher, signs or no signs, is how the teaching treats the gospel of Jesus Christ. As John says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
Sermon transcript
Let us prepare ourselves now for the reading of God’s Holy Word. We turn firstly in the Old Testament to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 13. Deuteronomy chapter 13. Beloved, this is the Word of God. Give your full attention to it. Deuteronomy 13 beginning with verse 1.
If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart. and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt. and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk.
So you shall purge the evil from among you. If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your fathers have known, the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him, but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall stone him to death, because he has sought to seduce you from the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you. If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to live in, Anyone saying that some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city saying, let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly.
If it is true in the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword. utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword. Then you shall gather all its booty and the into the middle of its open square and burn the city and all its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. And it shall be a ruin forever. It shall never be rebuilt.
Nothing from that which is put under the band shall cling to your hand in order that the Lord may turn from his burning anger and show mercy to you and have compassion on you and make you increase just as he has sworn to your fathers. If you will listen to the voice of the Lord your God, keeping all His commandments, which I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of the Lord your God.” Thus far the reading of God’s holy word. I ask you also to turn over with me to the New Testament, to the first epistle of John, 1 John chapter 5, and we’ll read verses 18-21. 1 John chapter 5, beginning with verse 18. Again, give your attention, this is the Word of God.
1 John 5.18 We know that no one who is born of God sins, but he who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Amen. Thus ends the reading of God’s holy word. Let us pray together. Our Father, these are powerful words, both from the Old and the New Testament, and may we be ready and willing to receive them as your word to us today. We pray that you would imprint them upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom you give to us, and we ask, O God, that we would be true and faithful worshipers of the true and the living God, and that God only, and none other. Hear us as we pray. Bless now, O God, the word as we receive it. as it is read and preached for us in our midst today. And may we glorify you by it. We ask and pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. We are finding more and more that the book of Deuteronomy is a great undertaking, aren’t we?
In the book of Deuteronomy, Yahweh reveals himself, reveals himself as the great and mighty sovereign who binds himself by covenant oath to his vassal people, Israel. They, as his vassal people, in turn, are to bind themselves to him, to honor him as their God, and they are to reject any other God, especially those gods of the peoples of the land of Canaan, the people and the gods that they are about to dispossess from the land. The book of Deuteronomy comes to us in the form of a in the form of the treaty of the great king, Yahweh, the great king of Israel, speaking to his covenant people.
In like manner, in the ancient suzerainty treaties of the Near East of that time, of the old ancient times, it was required of the vassal people that would be joined to the sovereign king that they must not be party to any evil words spoken against the sovereign, whether the words amounted to an actual affront or a conspiracy against that lord, that king. The vassal instead was obliged to report the insult or the fomenting of revolt. And in case of active rebellion, the vassal nation must even undertake military measures against the offenders. Moreover, the vassal must manifest fidelity to his lord in such cases, no matter who the rebel might be, whether that rebel was a prince or one of their nearest relatives. And we hear and read of those things here this morning.
And if that were so on the plane of merely human sovereign vassal arrangements of Old Testament times, how much more so the devotion we ought to show and the people of Israel ought to show in the covenant arrangement between Yahweh and his people. They were to have no other gods before him. He alone was Israel’s God. Yahweh was the true and the living God. And they were to love him with heart, mind, soul, and strength.
As we saw in our previous chapter 12 of Deuteronomy, the Israelites were to obliterate the names of the false gods from every place in the promised land where they were to go. Instead, Yahweh would establish his name in the place of his own choosing. And there, Israel would worship Yahweh by bringing their burnt offerings and their sacrifices, their tithes and their votive offerings, which they would vow to the Lord. Well, we move on to chapter 13 today and our text today then continues to address Israel’s vassal status in relationship to her great King Yahweh and the obligation she bears in covenant loyalty to him.
Concerning the purity for the purity of Israel’s worship, we are continuing the concern for the purity of Israel’s worship in line with the first commandment Here, Deuteronomy warns the people of the kinds of situations in which they might be tempted or pressured into deserting Yahweh for other gods.
Our passage clearly breaks down into three parts, three points this morning. And we’ll see, first of all, there is the danger of false religious leaders, and that’s found in verses one through five. The first section, verses one to five, false religious leaders. Second, Israel is warned of the possible conflict of loyalties when close family members are involved, and that involves verses six through 11. So first section, one to five, and then six to 11, family members. And then third, In verses 12 through 18, there is the danger of the pressure of an influential group of leaders in a community.
And in each of these cases, then we’ll see false religious leaders, family members, or community leaders. In each case, the threat that they bring to the people is the desire to lead them away from the worship of the true God and to chase after the idols which they do not know.
We would do well as we consider these to realize that such threats as are present there in those days for Israel, those threats to covenant loyalty were not confined to 1500 BC. False religious leaders, sometimes well-meaning family and friends, and yes, community leaders in the civil realm throughout history, have proven time and again to be the enemies of true religion, and many professors of religion have stumbled and fallen away as a result of the temptation that such persons have brought forward into the midst of the people of God. and thus thinking of the words of the writer of the book of Hebrews in chapter 2 verse 1. For this reason, says the writer of Hebrews, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it. How shall we escape, the writer asks, if we neglect so great a salvation as has been revealed to us in the person and work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, there were temptations to turn away in Israel’s day, and they did oftentimes chase after the other gods. And throughout history, the people of God have repeatedly, even continually, been assaulted by those who would turn people away from true worship. And we, I dare say, we are not exempt. We are not exempt in our day.
But as we consider Old Testament Israel, as we consider ourselves, the normative force of the inscripturated word that God had already given to Israel through Moses was to be given priority over any future prophetic words that might be spoken. This principle of the primacy of the word of God already revealed.
This principle will be further developed in Deuteronomy chapter 18 in the law relating to prophets stating that the one who is to come after Moses, the prophet who is to come must be like Moses. And so Moses is the first of those that God gave to Israel and others would come after him to be sure. Our text begins by telling us that no sign or miracle that appears to authenticate a person as a prophet is to be given precedence over the content of the words already spoken by a prophet. Indeed, a person may come with the signs of a true prophet, but if his words contradict the normative covenantal demand, then he is false, and according to Deuteronomy 13, that false prophet must be purged from the body of Israel like a lethal poison.
In Numbers 12 verses 5 and 6, it was already established that God’s self-disclosure would be continued through prophets to whom Israel would make himself known in visions and in dreams. So the fact that one might come claiming a dream or a vision is not off the mark. And so Deuteronomy 13, 1 and 2 says, if a prophet or a dreamer of dream arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.
For Yahweh your God is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow Yahweh your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments, Moses tells Israel. You shall listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death. because he has counseled rebellion against Yahweh, your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery to seduce you from the way in which Yahweh, your God, commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you, Moses says.
In other words, the prophet, or the supposed prophet, may try to establish himself as a genuine prophet by announcing a miraculous sign or a wonder, which then may even take place, perhaps a successful prediction, or perhaps even a miraculous event of sorts. Both signs and wonders are associated, to be sure, with the mighty power of Yahweh, especially in the Exodus narrative. And so if a person comes with a sign or a wonder, so far so good. That’s a possibility in Old Testament revelation. This hypothetical prophet has the standard means, dreams, or visions, and he apparently taps into divine power by his predictions.
However, if this seemingly authentic prophet suggests that the people should follow other gods, all the fire alarms in Israel should begin ringing. For no prophet sent by Yahweh would lead the people into a head-on denial of the first and fundamental demand of Yahweh. No other gods beside me, besides me.
And I mentioned this fire alarm should begin ringing because I’ve just received a book in the mail saying that there is an emergency bell system in Beaver County in case there’s a disaster at the nuclear power plant in Shippingport. And if that alarm goes off, we’re supposed to do certain things. Well, I’m saying that in Old Testament times, if there was a false prophet who tried to lead people astray. All of the fire alarms should have gone off in Israel. The people should have known what to do in terms of that great warning that God is giving here to them.
That would-be prophet’s words cancel out his amazing deeds. So even if he’s done a mighty sign, if he tells you to disobey the Lord or to turn away from Yahweh, no way. No display of miraculous powers. No amount of signs and wonders. No miraculous events can lend a moment’s credibility to anybody with a message so clearly at odds with the covenant truth and demand already revealed. The first response the Israelites must make to any such message, however dazzling its supporting act, is that they must not listen. The very words must fall on deaf ears.
Rather, they must exercise the discernment to see through the false messenger to the testing of God. God is testing Israel. We must be careful, however, to see that this does not mean that God would be trying to entice Israel to sin. but rather testing them to discover whether their actions would tally with their profession. Would they be true to the God who saved them? And what was being tested was the most fundamental commitment that God’s people are called upon to make, that is, to find out whether they really do love Him.
The challenge of idolatry provided a test of covenant commitment. A covenant-keeping people self-consciously living with a singular orientation and commitment to Yahweh would have the spiritual health and vitality to recognize and reject idolatrous enticement as decisively as a healthy body deals with invading germs, or as an exterminator deals with invading termites.
No way. The death penalty for incitement to idolatry is consistent with the foundational nature of the First Commandment. Thou shall have no other gods before me, Yahweh says. It needs to be seen, this death penalty needs to be seen, not as a vestige of religious fanaticism or primitive barbarism of such old times as long ago.
But we ought to see this instead as a measure of the seriousness with which the covenant was taken as the foundation of Israel’s whole national existence and peoplehood. It was the covenant that defined them. It was the covenant grace that saved them. That’s who they were in relationship to Yahweh. Therefore, no way were they to allow idolatry to turn them aside.
To go after other gods. as well as to be in rebellion against Yahweh was effectively a form of treason against the whole community. That is a serious criminal offense with potentially disastrous results for everybody. The prophet who led people in that direction would bring God’s curse on the nation. So who should die then, that false prophet or the whole nation?
Hence, the purpose of the execution is designed to purge the evil from among them, we’re told. It was a self-preserving act of removing a threat to the nation’s health and survival, like a body ejecting a poison. Here, then, is the Old Testament undergirding for the power given to the New Testament church to carry out church censures, including excommunication if necessary, to preserve the holiness of the body of Christ. So there is a place for church discipline in keeping with the maintenance of the purity of the covenant of God’s people. First of all, there was this idea of turning after other gods. We might identify two further aspects of the offense related to the false prophets that are specified here in chapter 13, verse 5. First of all, the phony prophet preached rebellion against Yahweh, the Lord, their God, who brought them out of Egypt and redeemed them from the land of slavery.
This redemption, of course, was the basis on which Israel was commanded to love Yahweh and to have no other gods. No other god had saved them. Yahweh alone had saved them out of Egypt. So deliberately going after other gods and even worse, leading others to do so was, to say the least, gross ingratitude. in the light of all Israel owed to Yahweh. No other God was owed anything. But a more serious effect of such desertion was that it would cut Israel off from the very source of their salvation.
Yahweh was not merely their God, but he was their Savior God. Who, where would they turn then for salvation if they abandoned Yahweh? To go after other gods was to exchange the true God, whose saving power had already been proven, to go after other gods, who were no gods, who could not even save their own breath, let alone save their worshipers who might follow after them.
Transferring this whole matter to our Christian context in the New Testament covenant times, the clearest criterion of what constitutes false or potentially idolatrous teaching from religious leaders, whether they claim prophetic gifts or not, whether they produce signs or wonders or not, is how does their teaching relate to the central tooth of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ? For Israel, the gospel of salvation was the story of the Exodus. For us, it is the story of the cross of the only begotten son of God. For both Israel for us and for us then, it is a matter of the essential priority of God’s grace and the good news of God’s historical redemption to distort these essentials or to lead people away from them into figments of human speculation is wicked idolatry, as our biblical text here this morning makes clear. And if the Lord dealt severely with Israel for failing to preserve the purity of the message of redemption entrusted to them, how much more ought we to fear and to hold all the more tenaciously to the gospel of salvation that has been entrusted to us.
For there is none other, there is no other gospel, no other Savior than Jesus, no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved, Peter says in Acts 4.12. So we must cling tenaciously to that gospel. And we hear Paul when he says, I have determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. And so we think again of Paul’s words.
If I or even if an angel should come preaching another gospel with all signs and wonders, no matter, refuse to hear, refuse to listen to such a false teacher. Not only did the false prophet of old teach rebellion against Yahweh, but we also see in chapter 13, verse 5, that he has tried to seduce you from the way that the Lord commanded you to follow.
Moses says to Israel, the expression, the way of the Lord usually has a strongly ethical meaning. It implies a whole orientation of personal and social life for the values, priorities and will of God. including a commitment to justice and compassion, to integrity, to purity. The way of Yahweh meant all these things for Israel. And so to go after other gods was to go a different way, to adopt different social, economic, political, and personal values.
To turn from the true god is to turn from the truly human way of life also. Godlessness and inhumanity are correlative. They go hand in hand. You turn away from God, you’re going to see all manner of sin. Without love for God, on the other hand, there will be no love for neighbor.
So once again, speaking into our context, in the Christian context, the Christian life is also described as walking in the way. Jesus himself is the way, the truth, and the life. Any so-called gospel is no gospel at all if it would turn us away from the way. Those who love Jesus will keep Jesus’ commandments.
Signs and wonders do not necessarily authenticate the truth of the message, the purity of the motives or the integrity of the mission of those who perform them. The most awful perversions of biblical truth can sometimes be accompanied by the most awesome displays of miraculous signs and wonders. So we need to judge with our ears and not just with our eyes. As 1 John says, we must test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
And by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. That is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, John writes, And now it is already in the world, 1 John 4, 1 through 3. So we must test the spirits.
As we turn back to our Deuteronomy passage, beyond the temptation to idolatry offered by the false prophets, in verses 1 to 5, we turn next to our second section, the temptation to idolatry in the private realm of the home and family, chapter 13, verses 6 through 11.
And there the temptation would be all the more subtle, more difficult to detect, being done secretly, and much more difficult to resist because of the close relationships of family and the authority involved. The harshness of verse eight in chapter 13 of Deuteronomy has to be understood in this light. All human instincts would militate against exposing a renegade within the family or exposing a close friend. So the law had to address those instincts with powerful negatives, not to yield, even if it were a family member.
Now, as in ancient Israelite society, ties of kinship, are the strongest of all or horizontal human loyalties. Theologically also, as we see in the applications of the fifth commandment, the family stood at the center of the triangular pattern of relationships between God, Israel, and the land. Moral and legal responsibilities to the family were understood to come higher than individual freedoms and rights. But although the family had priority over the individual, covenant loyalty to God had priority over both. Ties of family and friendship must not override covenant justice and the protection of the whole community.
And the people of God must not allow themselves to be turned aside even when that temptation is coming to them from a close beloved family member. where family life and covenant loyalty intertwine, then the strongest possible bond with tremendous potential for long-term blessing is forged.
But when they are thrown into conflict, when covenant and family stand opposite, then the most horrendous tensions can arise. These are often the most painful, the most costly conflicts that the believers have to face from the family. The family seeking to be loyal to the living God agonizes over one rebellious member living in idolatry or wanton sin. The individual seeking to be loyal to God, whether by mere profession of faith or by obedience to God’s call, can be torn apart if that loyalty is not shared by his family members or is actively attacked by those family and friends.
I want you to remember Job and Jeremiah and how their friends treated them, how their family treated them after they confessed their belief in the Lord. Also remember Jesus himself, how he endured tension and temptation from family and friends. He faced pressure from his own close family and from a closest friend. We’re thinking of Peter in Matthew 16, who sought to deflect him from his path of covenant obedience to God. And Jesus in turn warned his disciples that they too would face such opposition.
He even presented the potentially rival claims of God and family in the characteristic deuteronomic terms of love and hate. Deuteronomy 10 or Matthew 1037, where Jesus said, He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Now, neither Jesus nor Deuteronomy were by any stretch of the imagination anti-family.
They both were, however, passionately anti-idolatry and recognized in the family one of the toughest and subtlest sources of human or hidden idolatry on which many a profession of loyalty to the kingdom of God has floundered. Family members who could not simply resist their family and friends fell by the way because they would not hear and heed the voice of God. So we’ve looked thus far at two categories, the false religious leaders, the false prophets, and then in turn family and friends. But beyond those temptations presented by the false leaders or even by family members who could lead the people astray.
There is in Deuteronomy yet a third possible way in which such temptation could come to the people. And we see this in verses 12 through 18. Apostasy could grip a whole town, or dare we say a whole nation. And I say that very conscious of where we are today in the United States. Apostasy could grip a whole city or a whole nation under the influence of wicked men.
These men could be but a small but influential group who seek to reintroduce the Canaanite ways of the pagan people or to suddenly introduce the false prophets of the other gods into the civil realm. We think, for example, of those men who supported Jezebel in the importation of the prophets of Baal in First Kings 21. Again, the enticement to Israel is, let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known. But again, the instruction given to the covenant people is clear and emphatic.
You shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly. If it is true and the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, namely that these wicked men have tried to lead astray a whole city, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword, Moses says. The city and all its contents were to be burned as an offering to the Lord and placed under a perpetual ban in Israel. The city was never to be rebuilt.
As we contemplate the severity of this chapter and chapters like this one in Deuteronomy 13, we want to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we are no longer under the sanctions of the theocracy of the Old Testament. Lest we, however, be tempted to diminish our estimation of the awfulness of apostasy and idolatry.
Think about that for a moment. That’s what’s being put forward here. False teachers, family members, wicked men, trying to lead the people of Israel away from their God, away from the faith, into apostasy and into idolatry. And I’m asking you to consider the costliness of that. Unless we’d be tempted to diminish the estimation of how terrible that is apostasy and idolatry. Let us come again today to the cross of Jesus Christ. For only there do we come to understand the price of covenant faith, covenant faithfulness and covenant unfaithfulness. Jesus Christ completely devoted to his father’s will.
The true covenant keeper refused to listen to those false religious teachers who sought in every way to silence him. Family and friends alike sought in every way to dissuade him from the way of the cross. But he only set his face that much more like Flint towards Jerusalem, where he, therefore, the joy set before him, would endure the cross, despising the shame that he might sit down in the joy that had been prepared for him at the right hand of the throne of God. Beloved, he endured the cross. He accepted all the shame and humiliation that went with it. the nakedness, the beatings at the hand of, yes, Pontius Pilate, the religious leader, that wicked ruler. He was dead, he was buried. Nay, more than that, infinitely more than that, he descended into hell, enduring the wrath and curse of God, the utter forsakenness.
And we ask, for what? that the price would be paid, the price paid for our apostasy and our idolatry so that we would be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So we think of our covenant keeper through whom we are redeemed.
Beloved, we know, as John writes in 1 John, we know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. You don’t have to look very far to know that. That is true. And we know that the Son of God has come. We know that gospel. And he has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his Son, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. And thus, the first epistle of John ends with those familiar words.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Neither false teachers, nor family, nor wicked leaders in the nation or in the community should lead us astray from that true gospel we know, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Little children, I address you on behalf of the Heavenly Father, guard yourselves from idols. Amen. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, we would hear your word today. We would hear it powerfully in our hearts and souls.
For we have all been tempted, tempted by those false teachers who offer another gospel that is no gospel at all. Indeed, we know, O Father, that liberalism is a lie. We know it is a lie. It’s an idolatrous lie. We know it, and we embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as he is so freely offered to us in the scriptures. And we know that the health and wealth gospel is a lie, no matter what those who profess it claim to be able to accomplish. It’s a lie. It’s a lie straight out of hell, and we know it. Our Father, help us to embrace the truth and to hold tightly to the gospel we have heard and believed and received. And our Father, each of us has been tempted by family members who have sought to dissuade us from the way of Jesus Christ.
And yet we would not turn aside, O God, we would follow you and we would keep your commandments and thus we pray for the grace and help of the Holy Spirit. For we know that apart from that help we will surely stumble, we will surely fall. But those who are in Christ shall be kept and preserved unto eternal life, for ours is a great and wonderful Savior.
And we pray, O Father, that we would at this time especially be in prayer for our communities and for our nation, as we know there are many wicked men and women who would lead us astray, who would lead us into false things, things that are contrary to our God, contrary to our Christian faith, and religion. May we recognize apostasy for what it is. May we recognize idolatry for what it is, O God. And may we, as your people, be found faithful, serving and honoring you with heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And thus do we pray most humbly today, in the name of our Savior, that glorious name, that only name given unto men under heaven, whereby we may be saved. That glorious name of Jesus, may we never turn aside from it. and may we profess it and may we walk accordingly as your people we pray in Jesus. Amen.
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