Lesson 25
The Prophet’s Submission to Doctrine – 13:1-5
This section of Deuteronomy concerns loving your God with all your soul
or as we might translate it in contemporary language, loving the Lord our God
in all the details of life. Therefore
the second half of this book deals with the various details of national
living. Chapter 12 deals with the
unified worship. The section that we are dealing with is chapters 12-16 and
deals with national unity. In other
words, this produces the identity of the nation, and you can’t have the nation,
you can’t have a church, you can’t have anything unless you have it unified on
some basis. Something has to be there to
identify it. So in this section you will
find everything that identifies the nation
In chapter 12 we deal with the authorized worship centers. Tonight we deal with the emphasis on the
unity of doctrine. In chapter 14-15 we
have emphasis on religious practices, unity of religious practices. In chapter 16 we have unity in national
celebrations. This is where the unity of
the nation comes in. Every nation is conscious of the fact that you cannot hold
a nation together as we are going in the
Nations cannot survive until they first produce a relatively strong
consensus. In the early days of this
country there was a relatively strong consensus, what we would call a Christian
consensus, i.e. although many people were unbelievers nevertheless they
operated as though they were believers, they operated on the basic moral
foundations of Christian, etc. and this led to sort of a unity that held the
nation together. For example, in the
area of jurist prudence it controlled our concepts of Law which has been
destroyed by those who have gone to the concept of relativism. Just to emphasize this and show how important
it is, the communists are very aware of this.
Some believers in Soviet Russia were able to smuggle out a letter to
disprove a point. The point is that we
have such an organization in the world known as the World Council of Churches,
one of the greatest apostate organizations in the history of the church; one of
the most anti-Christian organizations in the history of the Church. It is basically grounded on the assumption
that we must have unity in Christendom at all costs, including that of
doctrine.
In the course of this letter, it shows you how intense is the conviction
behind the iron curtain that unity must exist.
It concerns, for example, the public school education of children in
Soviet Russia. In
In one of the magazines, The Miraculous Icon, a crusading atheistic
school mistress calls religious parents social criminals. She says (quote) “My
pupils learn one thing at school and the opposite at home. Either the school will educate them to deny
God or his family will bring him up as a two-faced hypocrite. There can be no compromise; let the parents
believer whatever they like but the future of the children does not belong only
to them. Parents like that are social
criminals.” The reason I direct your
attention to this remark is because this is precisely the kind of reasoning
that is promoted by the National Education Association in this country, of
course not to the extreme, namely that you parents do not have the right to bring
your children up where you want to. And
it is here where I forecast the collision between Church and State is going to
happen between the evangelical fundamentalists and the government. It is here where friction is going to
rise. The government is based on the
assumption that the state has the right to determine what your children will
learn and what they will not learn. This is a direct violation of the divine
institution of family and of marriage given in Deuteronomy. We’ve gone through this in Deut. 6 and Deut.
11 and we have in our society a direct head-on collision between the home and
the school officials on this point of view.
It’s one which Christian parents must continually meditate on and
continually ask the Lord’s guidance in to resolve this problem.
In Deut. 12 we went through the unity of the worship center. This whole chapter was devoted to one basic
idea and that was that the nation
This is where worship is to be in the Church Age. This is why this building is not a sanctuary;
this building has nothing to do with sanctuaries, nothing to do with temples,
it is not the Lord’s house, you don’t bring the tithes and offerings into the
Lord’s storehouse or anything like that. That’s all Old Testament. This is simply an assembly hall, it could be
a tent, it could be a living room somewhere, that’s beside the point. The point
is the temples are you, and the temple is me, the body of believers is the
temple and here is where the worship is occurring. Application: you cannot worship God unless
you are mentally alert and thinking.
This is why a lot of worship is really hypocritical because people come
to church because somebody twisted their arm or something so they sit there and
resent it all the time during the service.
This goes on and the reason it goes on is because people think that if
they get into a place we can have worship.
But that’s exactly wrong. The
point is you get in a place spiritually in your heart, that’s where the worship
occurs, regardless of your geographical location. You can worship God any place. They had some
fantastic worship services down in the lower levels of dungeons in the book of
Acts and it wasn’t conducted in any temple, yet the presence of God was just as
real there as it was in the Temple.
So we now have authorized worship service in the presence of God, not in
a temple, the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD and the Shekinah glory was removed
before that, around 583 BC. But the
presence of God is now available in every believer’s heart so therefore from
this point on worship occurs in the presence of God. Where’s the presence of God? The believer’s
heart. Where’s worship? The believer’s heart.
So this is where the shift has occurred moving from the Old Testament to
the New Testament.
Tonight we come to Deut. 13 and here we have a little different thing.
Chapter 12 was devoted to the unity of worship at the authorized center or
coming together in the presence of God.
It’s interesting in a marriage ceremony it starts “Dearly beloved, we
are gathered together here in the presence of God,” and if you stop to think
about it, that’s wrong. The presence of God is in the individual believer’s
heart, and if a person is a believer, there’s where God is. If the person isn’t a believer, God isn’t
there. Now He is by omnipresence but
He’s not there in the sense of worship.
That’s another little ditty that really doesn’t square with a lot of the
doctrine of the New Testament.
But in Deut. 13 we move to an entirely different area. Here we have unified adherence to
doctrine. This is always amusing because
you hear it said that doctrine divides, and everything that is anti-doctrine
unites. Isn’t that interesting because
in this chapter what is the basis of unity?
Doctrine. How do you imagine
Moses ever did that, he made a colossal mistake by saying that the nation would
be unified on the basis of doctrine.
That’s what he said, turn to verse 1.
This chapter can be divided into three sections, very obvious sections,
from verses 1-5; verses 6-11 and verses 12-18.
All of them have to do with the supremacy of doctrine.
In the first five verses we have doctrine is supreme over the
prophets. If you have a prophet, he has
to subordinate himself and his ministry to the Word of God. In verse 6-11 we have the subordination of
the home to the Word of God, and in verses 12-18 we have cities, the nation to
the Word of God. So the whole theme of
this chapter is subordination to the Word of God.
Let’s look at the first five verses: “If there arise among you a
prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, [2] And the
sign or the wonder comes to pass,” here’s where we begin with the ministry of a
prophet. Let’s look at the word
“prophet” and “dreamer.” What does the
word “prophet” speak of? Prophet stands
for a man who communicates the Word of God by words; a dreamer is one who
communicates God’s message by pictures, he stands for dreamers and seers. Dreamers were an authorized means of
revelation in the Old Testament. How did
people get the Word of God in the Old Testament? They got it through dreams, through visions
and through spoken words.
Turn to Num. 12:6 and you’ll see the ways in which the Word of God came
to the people in the Old Testament. Here
is God instructing the nation how He will communicate to that nation in the
future. “And He said, Hear now My words:
If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make Myself known unto him in a
vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.”
“Vision” is a phenomena in the daytime or when the prophet is
awake. For example, Ezekiel had visions;
Daniel had dreams. “Dream” is when the
prophet is asleep or is put to sleep by God for this dream. A vision is when a person behold the vision
when he’s awake, he is not asleep. These
are the two ways in which the Word of God came in the Old Testament.
So this is the way God is going to make Himself known, in a vision or a
dream. However, notice verses 7-8
because here is the difference. “My
servant, Moses, is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house. [8] With him will
I speak mouth to mouth, even obviously [plainly], and not in dark speeches; and
the similitude of the LORD shall he behold. Wherefore, then, were ye not afraid
to speak against My servant, Moses.” In
other words, do you see from this passage that Moses is to be a unique
person? Moses is to be the one who sets
the pace and sets the whole trend for the rest of the Bible. From now on, Moses is the one who is the
model prophet. And this is crucial
because from this point on all prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, no matter how great
they are, must be measured by their conformity to Moses. Moses is the model from this point
onward. He is the absolute
authority.
So Moses becomes the model.
Why? Because he is not just a
prophet or a dreamer; he is one who has spoken face to face with God and this
is something that the other prophets did not do. For example, Isaiah had visions, but he never
spoke… Jesus Christ in the Old Testament came personally and spoke to Moses and
that is something that no other Old Testament prophet ever had. Moses is absolutely unique in this respect. This is why in the New Testament when the
Gospel of John begins, who is contrasted with Jesus Christ? Moses, the Law came by Moses but grace and
truth by Jesus Christ. The only one of
compreable magnitude to Jesus of Nazareth is Moses because Moses alone is the
one, of all the great prophets of the Old Testament, who actually had a
conversation face to face with Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form.
What about dreams and visions today?
Dreams and visions today are not authorized because the Canon of
Scripture is closed. The Canon of
Scripture has been closed; in the book of Revelation it was closed, prophesied
in 1 Cor. 13, and dreams and visions today may be means of guidance but not
revelation. God may guide you through
dreams but He does not give you new added revelation through dreams. You can have dreams on all sorts of
things. Basically every person dreams
because of one thing that’s wrong, you have too little oxygen in the brain and
this is caused by a stuffy room, poor blood circulation, you over ate and all
the blood is in your stomach, etc. So
you can have dreams and visions and all sorts of thing and it has nothing to do
with it, it’s just that you have a low oxygen level in your brain. But God, nevertheless, can use dreams and
visions to guide but not reveal. That’s
the difference.
However, here in the Old Testament God did use dreams and visions as an
authorized means of revelation. What do I mean by revelation? I mean God giving new information verbally to
man that man did not have before. This
dream and vision system of the Old Testament was subject to control and in this
chapter you’re going to see a very amazing thing, something that’s often
forgotten today, and that is which has priority, a dream and vision or Moses
teaching? You would think to hear some
people today, oh, the dream and the vision, he’s got a testimony from God. Oh no, not according to Deuteronomy 13. In Deuteronomy 13 the law is laid down that
the Word of God is absolute authority.
Verse 2, “And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke unto
thee, saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us
serve them,” so now you see the problem, this man has made a sign and a wonder,
verse 1. What is a sign? A sign is a non-spectacular occurrence of
something that is a miracle because it just happened to occur at the right
moment. In other words, in itself it is
not miraculous, but it’s occurrence at just that moment is miraculous. Example: this is the 15th
anniversary of D-day. It was interesting
to study D-day because I was a meteorologist and meteorologists played a great
role in the D-day invasion. If you saw
the means used to forecast weather, it was a very, very difficult to advise the
allied commanders to move in on D-day, and it all hinged on a low tide and
cloud cover. Here is one of the cases
which would be an illustration of signs.
The bombers were supposed to go in across the channel. Every group in the military had different
weather requirements. The bombers wanted
to come in with relatively partly cloudy conditions; they wanted low
clouds so they could hide above the
overcast and the anti-aircraft fire couldn’t get them and then they could drop
down through the overcast and let go on the targets. But the fighters want relatively clear low
area because they needed to see to strike with.
The men who landed wanted for and low conditions on the beaches so they
wouldn’t be seen. So you had to have all
this together and nobody but God Himself could give all these conditions.
It’s very interesting, just at the crucial point the clouds broke at
exactly the right level. They had broken
the midnight before when the gliders went in they had to because the gliders
are a problem because they don’t have any means of propelling themselves and
once they are cut loose that’s it. You
had all these factors operate together.
There were several accounts during this invasion of blue incidents here
and there. For example, when a glider
force was going the clouds broke just enough to give the pilots enough to get
down through these holes. That was one
of the great stories of the D-day invasion.
Another one was how they had a cold front that was coming through the
channel with gale winds and that cold front slowed down just enough to allow
the first wave on shore. Several other
incidents occurred that showed you that these events, not miraculous in
themselves, came at just the right moment.
Down through history we have seen this.
For example, one of the greatest battles ever fought at sea was the
destruction of the Spanish Armada. Spain
had a fight with England; Sir Frances Drake went out and he had a small naval
force that was supposed to block the Spaniards coming up through the English
Channel. The Spaniards got up through
the English channel and they couldn’t operate or maneuver well; the English had
small boats which they could maneuver and just as soon as the Spanish Armada
got in the Channel then came up a storm and these boats got all fouled up
together and they couldn’t maneuver and that is one reason why Sir Frances
Drake was able to carry out a successful assault against the Spanish navy at
that time, sunk it, and from that time on Spain was never a great threat to the
British Empire. Again, the storm in itself was not a miracle, but its
occurrence happened just at the right time and this would be equivalent to a
sign.
A wonder is something else. A
wonder is when something comes that is absolutely miraculous. That is the difference between a sign and a
wonder. The word “wonder” connotes
something miraculous in itself; sign is something not miraculous but it becomes
miraculous by the timing.
The prophet or dreamer predicts that something is going to happen. This does come to pass in verse 2, but along
with it he had a little propaganda. In
the last part of verse 2 you see what he says, “Let us go after other gods,
which thou hast not known, and let us serve them.” Let me give you an example of what this
means. This does not mean… repeat, this
does not mean that when he predicts, I
predict such and such is going to happen on such and such a date, and then I’m
going to say let’s go after other gods.
He wasn’t that obvious in the Old Testament. That is not saying necessarily that the false
prophet has to openly say let us go after other gods. He can be subtle about it and for an example
of how subtle they can be about it, turn to Jer. 28 where you read a case where
a prophet was very subtle about this. I’m
using this as an example so you will see what the Scriptures mean when it says
“let us go after other gods.” It does
not mean the prophet got up there and said let’s go after other gods, come on,
sign up here. That’s not what he meant,
it wasn’t as obvious. It was the way in
which he maneuvered people; that is what is meant. This is just a content expression that you
find in Deut. 13.
In Jer. 28:1 you have a prophet called Hananiah. “And it came to pass the same year, in the
beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year and in
the fifth month,” and Zedekiah was kind of an ignoramus so he was a ripe sucker
for this kind of approach, “that Hananiah, the son of Azzur, the prophet, who
was of Gibeon, spoke unto me in the house of the LORD, in the presence of the
priests and of all the people, saying,” now watch what happens. He’s not saying let’s go after other
gods. But Jeremiah says he is, so what
does Jeremiah mean? He means that this
man is subtly getting people to violate the Word of God.
Verse 2, this is what the false prophet is saying, “Thus speaks the LORD
of hoses, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of
Babylon, [3] Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the
vessels of the LORD’s house, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took away
from this place, and carried them to Babylon.”
Now any Old Testament saint who knew anything of the Old Testament would
say that guy’s a phony. Why? Because the discipline was on Israel seventy
years to make up for a time span, it was punishment on the nation, and it had
to be seventy years. So in 586 BC
Nebuchadnezzar comes along and removes the vessels out of the Temple, the house
of the Lord, the Temple, and he is going to take them back to Babylon and kept
them for how long? Two years? No, seventy years because that is how much is
predicted in the Old Testament. This is
a disciplinary action that God has placed upon the nation. Now comes along this man, speaking in the
name of the Lord, verse 2, that Nebuchadnezzar is going to bring them back in
two years.
Verse 5, “Then the prophet, Jeremiah, said unto the prophet, Hananiah,
in the presence of the priests, and in the presence of all the people who stood
in the house of the LORD,” and notice the diplomatic approach that Jeremiah
uses. Verse 6, “Even the prophet,
Jeremiah, said, Amen! The LORD do so; the LORD perform thy words which thou
hast prophesied, to bong again the vessels of the LORD’s house, and all that is
carried away captive, from Babylon into this place. [7] Nevertheless, hear now this word that I
speak in thine ears, and in the ears of all the people, [8] The prophets who
have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many
countries, and against great kingdoms, of war and of evil, and of pestilence.
[9] The prophet who prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall
come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the LORD hath truly sent
him.” So there’s the guarantee that it’s going to come to pass.
Verse 10, “Then Hananiah, the prophet, took the yoke from off the
prophet Jeremiah’s neck, and broke it. [11] And Hananiah spoke in the presence
of all the people, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Even so will I break the yoke
of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, from the neck of all nations within the
space of two full years. And the prophet Jeremiah went you.” [12] Then the word of the LORD came unto
Jeremiah, the prophet after that Hananiah, the prophet, had broken the yoke
from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying,” and this is what the Lord
told Jeremiah, I want you to go back and tell off that phony. Verse 13, “Go and tell Hananiah, saying,
Thus saith the LORD, Thou hast broken the yokes of wood, but thou shalt make
for them yokes of iron. [14] For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of
Israel, I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they
may serve Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and they shall serve him; and I have
given him the beasts of the field also. [15] Then said the prophet, Jeremiah,
unto Hananiah, the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah, the LORD hath not sent thee,
but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. [16] Therefore, thus saith the
LORD, Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth; this year thou
shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD. [17] So
Hananiah, the prophet, died the same year in the seventh month.
The word “rebellion” in verse 16 is important because this is the word
used in Deut. 13. Did Hananiah openly
say let’s go after another God? No he
didn’t, but he did something else; he prophesied a false word from God. He misrepresented the Word of God to these
people and said God is going to do something when God wouldn’t do it.
Turn back to Deut. 13 and you’ll see where this word “rebellion” comes
in and you’ll see now that it doesn’t mean an outright statement, the men
weren’t that open about it, it’s more subtle than that. Verse 2, “Let us go after other gods, which
thou hast not known, and let us serve them.”
That entire phrase summarizes the content and effect of the message of
the false prophet. In other words, the
false prophet doesn’t say that literally but that is the effect of what he’s
saying, for if these people listen to Hananiah then they would follow
Hananiah’s word. Is it going to be
Hananiah’s word or is it going to be God’s Word, that is the issue. If they follow Hananiah’s word they are not
following God’s Word and therefore they are following other gods; that’s the
point. This is the rebellion that is
mentioned here.
Verse 3, “Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that
dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you,” now isn’t this
interesting. Here comes a man who very
subtly says you listen to what I say, and not only does he say listen to what I
say but according to verses 1 and 2 he can show you miracles. He can work miracles right in your
midst. And the average believer would
say great, let’s give the man a collection, let’s put him in the first so and
so church and let him have a big revival service, this man is a great man of
God, etc. because he has shown a miracle, and yet at the same time he is
distorting the Word of God. Here, more
than any other place in Scripture, you have it laid down black and white, which
has priority, a miracle or the Word of God?
The Word of God, verse 3, you will not listen to him. Miracles by themselves do not prove a
thing. Remember that next time you hear
some of these divine healers running around and all the rest of the garbage
that goes on in this country. Don’t
listen to them unless it conforms to the Word of God. “Thou shalt never,” and in the Hebrew this is
an absolute negation, I don’t want you to spend a minute listening to these
people because I am simply “testing you to know whether you are loving the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul” or not.
That’s the point, God has brought a test to the nation and He wants to
see if these people are really following Him or not. What He’s really saying in the Hebrew is I want
to know whether you are lovers of God, it’s a noun, a participle used as a
noun, which means are you lovers of God or not.
That’s what meant, not “are you loving” but “are you lovers of God with
all your heart and with all your soul?”
The emphasis here is on a mature believer.
What is a mature believer? A
person who is habitually following the Lord has a knowledge of doctrine and has
discernment. Why does he have
discernment? Heb. 5 says because a
mature believer is one who has habitually learned to use the Word of God. It does not happen over night, it comes the
hard way, learning by mistake and trial and error, etc. but over the years you
cultivate discernment so that you can spot phonies in the religious area. This is why God commands believers in the Old
Testament adhere to Moses’ word because He says listen, the time is coming that
I am going to deliberately send you prophets and they’re going to have all the
signs and wonders and everybody is going to go oh, look at Brother So and So,
Brother So and So has a fantastic ministry, look at all the things he does, our
pastor can’t do that but Brother So and So can, Brother So and So must be close
to the Lord. That has nothing to do with
it at all; it has to do whether Brother So and So is with the Word of God or
not, that’s the point.
In the Old Testament let me summarize the ways by which a miracle was
made legitimate. Two things had to
occur. First, that miracle had to be
done in accordance with the prophesied plan of God. In other words, it had to fit in with the
prophetic formula given in the prophetic books.
This is why a lot of this tongues speaking business is nonsense for a
person who knew Isaiah 28 would realize what tongues is. Tongues is a sign of discipline, not a sign
of blessing. God said when Israel sees
tongues it means discipline, it means I am going to preach the gospel to this
nation through other languages, Isaiah 28 quoted by Paul in 1 Cor. 14. The point is that you had predicted something
to happen, Joel 2, God is going to pour out His Spirit. If you look at Joel 2 when the Spirit was
poured out, several things were supposed to happen. One, they were supposed to see visions, they
were supposed to dream dreams, the heavens and earth were to have astro
phenomena occur and a few other things.
You had all of this predicted, but there was one thing in Joel 2 that
was not predicted, and it was tongues.
Do you know why? Because tongues
comes from Isaiah 28 and in Isaiah 28 it’s a passage on discipline, the fifth
step of discipline on a nation.
Now what happened on the day of Pentecost? Something shifted; on the day of Pentecost
when Peter gets up to say, Brethren, this thing has happened before your eyes
and he quotes Joel 2 and he says this is what has happened, showing that the
Spirit had indeed come, the Spirit has come on schedule as predicted. But what has happened to the manifestation of
the Spirit? Now the manifestation of the
Spirit isn’t visions, isn’t dreams, Luke does not mention these in Acts 2 for
deliberate reasons, although they occur later on, and astro phenomena don’t
occur either in Acts 2. Where do you have the sun and the moon darkened in Acts
2? You don’t. It’s not there. Why? Because as we have said earlier in Acts
2 the nation Israel has rejected Messiah and so while the Holy Spirit has come
on schedule, testifying to God’s faithfulness, the nation has said no to His
Son, they have crucified His Son, they don’t want the Messiah, so the nation is
not prepared to receive the Holy Spirit when He comes; only a remnant is
prepared. At this point God says all
right Israel, you have not broken out of My covenant, I’m going to give you the
sign of discipline and you go back to Isaiah 28 and you will see that tongues,
God replaced visions, dreams and astro phenomena to prove to the nation that
Israel was now going into the fifth step of discipline according to Lev. 26 and
Deut. 28 and Isaiah 28. All these
passages show you, therefore a person who knows the Old Testament can spot
tongues; today the tongue phenomenon is not of the Lord.
The tongue phenomena has blessings of the Lord, God uses certain
phenomena here and there, etc. but our argument is that you cannot label what
occurs today, gibberish, with tongues; it cannot be done because tongues is understood
from Isaiah 28. What you have today is
people, emotionally responding to the Word of God in many cases and truly in
some cases being blessed, yes, but they have no right to label that with the
word “tongues” because tongues in the Bible is a sign of discipline to the
nation Israel; it has nothing to do with blessing, absolutely nothing to
do. You can’t find one passage in God’s
word where tongues is used for blessing in the Old Testament and here’s where
you get your prediction; here’s where you get your prophecy. What has happened today is that we have a
tendency in our culture to exalt emotions and feelings over reason. So we live in a day when people’s hearts are
empty, including Christian and non-Christian, the non-Christian goes to the
campus and he gets it with the drugs, etc. why? Because drugs offer an escape,
it offers a kick. Now Christians are
doing the same thing because they haven’t paid attention to the Word of God,
they’re not interested in the Word of God.
You can always spot these people because they never habitually study the
Word. So they go around and they want a
kick, they’re empty, and they come to this thing, and it’s been repeated in
church history before, and they want this experience and they get it. There’s only one little problem with it,
non-Christian also get it. Therefore
that’s another reason it’s not of the Lord in the sense it’s not the tongues of
the New Testament. Tongues in the New
Testament are a sign gift. Here again
you have a modern day example of people totally confused because they’ve
emphasized a miracle over the Word and that is wrong; you emphasize the Word
over the miracle.
So your first condition for a miraculous authentication in the Bible is
that it has to congeal with Moses’ doctrine.
That’s the first thing. The
second thing is that the miracle has to be a bona fide miracle. This may
sound stupid to say this but it’s not so stupid when you think about it. It has to be a real miracle because when God
gives a miracle it is a bona fide
miracle, not something phony. Here’s
going to be the danger, as I see it.
People who claim that God has done something in a miraculous way are
open to a tremendous shock some day because sooner or later in the study of
psychology, etc. men are going to find out about this phenomena and are going
to be able to duplicate it in the laboratory, then where’s you sign gift? It’s shot because it is not miraculous. A miraculous gift will never be duplicated,
absolutely not. Therefore it has to be a real miracle and it has to adhere to
Mosaic doctrine. In verse 2 it does not
adhere to Mosaic doctrine, therefore it is to be rejected.
In Deut. 18 you see the other test for a prophecy. There are two tests, Deut. 13, it had to
adhere to doctrine; Deut. 18, it had to be a real miracle. Deut. 18:20-22, “But the prophet, who shall
presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or
who shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. [21]
And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath
not spoken? [22] When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing
follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken,
but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of
him.”
Notice, this is not a positive test.
Repeat—it is NOT a positive test.
Read that verse very carefully, it does not say if this comes to pass it
proves it’s of the Lord. That’s not the
way it’s phrased, look at it again, “If it does not come to pass, then it
proves it is not of the Lord.” So you
have two tests, one, Deut. 13, does it adhere to Mosaic doctrine, yes or no;
and Deut. 18, if there is one mistake, one part of that thing that doesn’t come
true that invalidates the whole thing.
When God gives a prophecy it is totally exactly right. When God prophesied in the Old Testament that
Jesus Christ would ride on an ass through the east gate of Jerusalem, He did,
literally. And when God predicted in Psalm 22 that they would cast lots for His
vesture, it literally happened, perfectly. That is the sign of bona fide prophecy.
Back to Deut. 13:4, “You shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear
Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye shall serve Him, and
cleave unto Him.” In the Hebrew you get
an emphasis you don’t get in the English.
In the Hebrew everything where you see “Him” and “LORD” is emphasized. So where it says “You shall walk after the
LORD” it means you shall walk after the LORD and not someone else. When it says you shall fear Him it means you
shall fear Him and not someone else; you’ll keep His commandments, not someone
else’s; you’ll obey His voice, not someone else’s; you will serve Him, not
someone else, you will cleave unto Him, not someone else.
Verse 5, “And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to
death,” capital punishment for those of you who don’t like capital punishment,
this is dedicated to you, notice capital punishment in the Old Testament. How do you suppose God authorized capital
punishment? God authorized capital
punishment in five different places in the Old Testament. He authorized it first for murder, and by the
way, there’s a serious reason why He authorized it. He authorized it for slave
trading. Nobody was permitted to
slave-trade in the Old Testament. Third,
false religion, I’ll go back to that.
The fourth reason for capital punishment was certain sexual sins, not
because they were sexual but because of the tremendous destruction of the
marriage relationship and the family relationship. And this is a very interesting one, defiance
of family and civil authority. We’ll get
into a section where if parents can’t control a kid by the time he’s a
teenager, take him out and stone him.
That was capital punishment authorized in Scripture. The high school population would suddenly
decline overnight. But this is the way
it was and there’s a good reason behind it because their theory was that if the
parents couldn’t bang discipline into him by the time he was a teenager they
never would and they couldn’t be bothered with this kind of a citizen running
around Israel, so they eliminated him when he was a little juvenile
delinquent. They never did this
correctly but that was the theory of the Law.
Here are five means of capital punishment in the Old Testament. Now why do you suppose they made this
one? Some of you would agree to the
other four, you’d say that seems reasonable, maybe you wouldn’t like four but
generally you’d go along with this in the sense of a severe crime. But I’m sure you’d say what’s wrong with
this. Here’s what’s wrong with it; this
is a theocracy, there is no religious freedom in Israel and therefore an act of
establishing a false religion is equal to what we call treason. That is why you have capital punishment for
this crime. It is treasonous. Why?
It goes back to the idea of the suzerainty vassal treaties which we have
covered; namely you have a treaty between God and the twelve tribes. This treaty is shown to be the format of the
book of Deuteronomy. You can examine
international law in the second millennium BC and find the same provision.
On page 84 of Meredith Kline’s book he writes this: “In the ancient
suzerainty treaties it was required of the vassal,” this person, the twelve
tribes, “that he must not connive that evil word spoken against the suzerain”
which would be God in this case, “whether they amounted to an affront or a
conspiracy. The vassal must report the
insult and the fermenting of revolt. In
case of active rebellion he must undertake military pressures against the
offenders. Moreover he must manifest
fidelity to his lord in such cases, no matter who the rebel might be, or the
prince or nearest relative.” So we now
know from ancient international law of the second millennium BC exactly how
this law was to operate. Moses’ Law was
written in the format of a treaty of the second millennium, and this brings a
lot of understanding to the seriousness of this command in verse 5, that
dreamer “shall be put to death.” Treason is any crime that is destructive of
the base of your nation, anything that is going to destroy that base is a
treasonous act.
This is the definition of treason, “because he hath spoken rebellion
against the LORD your God,” not “to turn you away,” to turn you away sounds
like it’s a verb, it’s not a verb in the Hebrew, it’s a noun, and this is the
noun that was used back in Jer. 28 that we saw.
So “he has spoken rebellion against the LORD your God,” in other words,
it’s a solicitation to follow some other authority, “who has brought you out of
the land of Egypt,” and for understanding this verse the best thing to do would
be make a parenthesis before the word “which” and continue the parenthesis down
to the end of the word “bondage,” for that just amplifies God. So you have a
parenthesis, “(who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of
the house of bondage,)” end parenthesis, then it continues the main sentence,
“to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk
in. So shalt thou put the evil away from
the midst of thee.” The word “thrust”
would be equivalent in our English word to force out, to force out of the way. Why is this crucial, “to force thee out of
the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in.” Because our way is a walk of faith.
We’ve been pretty gruesome up to this point but let me show you God’s
loving concern behind this strong act, the walk of faith. This is why God insisted that these people kill
traitors, because if you walk by faith your object has to be true. If anybody comes along and manipulates the
object of your faith, and you’re walking on faith, you’re dead. So you have to have that object of your faith
protected, and this is why in the Old Testament God always did everything He
could to protect the inerrancy of Scripture, to guard it, for He has us,
believer, will you trust Me, would you stand on the promises, will you walk
with Me, will you apply these in your life.
God would be a hypocrite if when He said that on the one hand He allowed
people to invent all sorts of counterfeits.
God will not tolerate counterfeits because He has told us, child, I want
you to walk by faith, trust Me for what I say.
And if someone else comes along and professes to speak in the name of
the Lord, the child who is walking by faith, what’s he going to do? He’s going to follow that and he’s going to
fall. This is why God is so zealous to
guard His Word against any contamination and this is why we as believers, if we
are really loving the Lord with all our soul, will do exactly the same.
How do I put this into practice?
One thing, know the Word of God and don’t give to any organization
without first finding out what that organization believes and how they are
ministering. You’re a sucker if you
do. Don’t give money to a church or any
other organization unless you know were they stand and what is happening to
their money. You are silly, as a believer, not to ask these questions; it’s not
carnal to ask these questions. And any
organization, if it’s spiritual will welcome those questions. And any organization that’s irritated, I’d
cross them right off my list right away because it shows you they are not
interested in giving account for the Lord’s funds. You do the same thing with a false teacher;
don’t buy it just because somebody gets up and says oh, how I love Jesus and
everybody claps and this man is ministering to the Lord, etc. You find out what he believes; don’t buy
it. I come from a church where a
missionary has recently bilched that church out of $5,000 because he was going
to go to another country and set up orphanages.
Nobody could find where the orphanages were; he wasn’t even there, he
had an extended vacation at church expense, just because believers said oh,
this man sounds spiritual, let’s give him some money. This goes on all the time. Christians are the
easiest people to gyp. It’s a big
racket.
This is not to impugn in any way the motives of legitimate missionary
organizations, there are thousands of them doing an honoring job to the Lord
and just a few that are these screwball outfits. But unfortunately the only way you can tell
the wheat from the chaff is ask questions.
It’s the same thing with Bible teaching, it’s the same thing with the
local church. Always apply the Word, that is your criteria and don’t buy all
this miracle business. Listen and pay
attention, is the Word of God honored first and last, the Alpha and Omega.