DEUTERONOMY 13
The last section of the previous chapter is a warning against being ensnared by things over which one has previously got the victory. Many a person has walked [p. 158] in apparent superiority to certain things for years, and then fallen under their power. An order which is pleasing to man after the flesh is sure to have idolatrous elements in it. There will be something in it that either obscures the revelation of God, or to some extent takes away the glory of Christ, or sets aside the Spirit of God. The result of such things getting a place in practice or in teaching is that the character of what professes to be approach to God becomes such as not to be pleasurable to Him, and there may even be introduced into it that which He regards as “abomination”.
As to what is evil, and contrary to God, we are not even to “inquire” into it. “I wish you to be wise as to that which is good, and simple as to evil” (Romans 16: 19). There is a great tendency in the human mind to crave knowledge as to what is wrong, and many have been ensnared by needlessly investigating evil teachings, and have fallen under Satan’s power thereby. The important thing is to know what is good, and to go on with it.
Chapter 13 regards the people of God as having known Him. We are not to be turned aside to “go after other gods, whom thou hast not known” (verses 2, 6, 13). We are to be true to what we know. This is a principle which will preserve the youngest babe in Christ. We may not know much, but let us be true to it, and we shall be preserved, and we shall follow on to know the Lord. There was a man who only knew “one thing”, but he would not be diverted from it, and he quickly got more. (See John 9) What we, as believers, know of God is so precious that the devil will do all he can to divert us from it. But we must resist him, “stedfast in faith” (1 Peter 5: 9).
The instruction of this chapter is very solemn, for it shews the extreme displeasure with which God regards those who seek to draw His people out of the way in [p. 159] which He has commanded them to walk (verse 5). Such persons were to be put to death, however near and dear they might be; they were not to be spared, pitied, nor screened. They were marked by speaking “revolt against Jehovah your God”; they were abhorrent to Him, and He would have them to be reprobated in the most absolute way by His people. It need hardly be said to Christians that in its application to ourselves this does not suggest any violence against persons, but extreme moral detestation and condemnation of what is contrary to God in their teachings, There is not to be the slightest allowance of, nor fellowship with, the evil deeds of such as pervert the truth, or “the right paths of the Lord”. It is our privilege and our duty to pray for the good of persons whose teachings are false, and to desire that God may “give them repentance to acknowledgment of the truth, and that they may awake up out of the snare of the devil”, and to this end we are to be marked by “in meekness setting right those who oppose” (2 Timothy 2: 24 - 26), but the spirit and action of grace towards them personally is in no way to weaken our abhorrence of the teachings with which they are identified. Such persons are to be outside the pale of Christian fellowship, like the twice-admonished heretical man, of whom Paul says, “Have done with” him (Titus 3: 10). Not bringing the doctrine of Christ, they are not to be received into the house, nor greeted (2 John 10, 11). They are to be separated from as vessels to dishonour (2 Timothy 2: 21).
This chapter would lead us to anticipate the possibility of being tested by pernicious influences in three different forms. Verses 1 - 5 refer to “a prophet, or one that dreameth dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass that he told unto thee”. We are expressly warned against such in the New Testament. “Many false prophets”, says John, “are gone out into the world” (1 John 4: 1).
“[p. 160] But there were false prophets also among the people”, says Peter, “as there shall be also among you false teachers, who shall bring in by the bye destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2: 1). And Paul speaks of such as “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And it is not wonderful, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also transform themselves as ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11: 13 - 15). Paul says also, “For I know this, that there will come in amongst you after my departure grievous wolves, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves” — the elders of the assembly in Ephesus! — “shall rise up men speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20: 29, 30).
There are many such at the present time, and some of them profess to give signs or wonders — healing, speaking with tongues, supernatural manifestations or communications from the spirit-world, and so on — and what they say may sometimes really “come to pass” (see verses 1, 2). But these things are not to be allowed to impress or overawe us; they are to be regarded as a test. “For Jehovah your God proveth you, to know whether ye love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul”. We shall find that all these prophets and dreamers, while they may speak “swelling words”, and even quote Scripture largely — as did also their master the devil — speak “revolt” against
“Our God whom we have known,
Well known in Jesus’ love”.
They speak “revolt against Jehovah your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage” (verse 5). They do not call upon us to wonder and adore as we behold the [p. 161] Lamb of God in the place of sin, and of sin’s judgment, as the Passover. They do not tell us that He who hung upon the cross was “over all, God blessed for ever” (Romans 9: 5), or that the Fulness of Godhead dwells in Him bodily as a glorified Man at the right hand of God. They do not magnify to our souls the grace of a Redeemer and Saviour God, or the fruits of redemption in present and eternal blessing. They do not tell us that through the one offering of Christ we are perfected for ever, or that God’s salvation in a Risen Christ gives complete deliverance out of the present evil world. They do not recall to us that we have been set free from everything that once held us in bondage, and that God in the fulness of His love has delighted to give us His Spirit, and to bring us to the abode of His holiness, and to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. They may tell us of wonderful things — past, present, or future — but the actual effect of their specious teaching is to take us away from the truth of the glad tidings, and from that knowledge of God in which all true blessing consists.
It is a day of false prophets and dreamers, but without exception they are marked by defective and erroneous thoughts of the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by thoughts of God which are contrary to the truth of the glad tidings which have been announced to us, and which also we have received, and in which we stand, and by which also we are saved (1 Corinthians 15: 1, 2). They may “by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Romans 16: 18), but they really speak “revolt” against the God whom we know as Redeemer, Justifier, Saviour and Deliverer, and whose good and acceptable and perfect will it is now our privilege to prove.
In verses 6 - 11 the test comes in a more secret and appealing way. “If thy brother, the son of thy mother,
[p. 162] or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, who is to thee as thy soul, entice thee secretly”, etc. This refers to private and personal influence brought to bear upon us by those with whom we have the closest and most intimate ties of natural affection. But no feelings of personal regard or natural affection are to weigh with us for a moment to lead us to consent to such enticings, or even hearken to them. We are called upon to discern — and the unction we have received will enable us to discern — when any influence tends to draw us away from what we have learned through the glad tidings, and from that which has been “the faith of God’s elect” from the beginning. For we have had a spiritual ancestry, answering to “thy fathers” in verse 6, and we do well to remember those who have spoken to us the word of God (Hebrews 13: 7). This would apply specially to those of whom Peter speaks as “your apostles” (2 Peter 3: 2). From whatever quarter, or in whatever form, inducements to depart come to us they are to be resisted in the most decided way. “That prophet ... shall be put to death” (verse 5). “Thou shalt in any case kill him” (verse 9).
The third section of the chapter (verses 12 - 18) would refer to departure of a collective or assembly character, for it is “in one of thy cities”. And here we get for the first time an expression which recurs frequently afterwards in Scripture — “children of Belial”. It is sad to think that there are those amongst the people of God who are thus designated by the Holy Spirit. They are morally worthless as having nothing in common with Christ (see 2 Corinthians 6: 15). We need to be reminded that there are such persons, and that their influence may even draw away assemblies. “The woman Jezebel” is a veritable “daughter of Belial”, and her influence in the assembly in Thyatira is of the very character against which Deuteronomy 13 warns us. “Her children will I kill [p. 163] with death; and all the assemblies shall know that I am he that searches the reins and the hearts; and I will give to you each according to your works” (Revelation 2: 20 - 23). This is much like Deuteronomy 13: 11.
Departure from God is never so serious as when it takes assembly character. The angel of the assembly in Thyatira was held responsible for permitting Jezebel with her corrupting and idolatrous teachings, and “the Son of God, he that has his eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass”, will judge unsparingly both the teacher and the taught “unless they repent”. Religious influences that do not give Divine Persons their proper place are essentially idolatrous. There should be holy jealousy as to such things, and intense repudiation of them. Indeed in principle this would apply to anything which tends “to draw thee out of the way that Jehovah thy God commanded thee to walk in”. We are to stand perfect and complete in everything that is God’s will, and not to allow any influence that would be contrary to it. Those influences have to be destroyed, as to their power in our souls.
If our brethren would lead us away they are to be resisted. Not even one so conspicuous as Peter was to be exempt from being withstood to the face when he played a dissembling part (Galatians 2). It might seem immaterial whether a Jew ate with Gentiles or not. Some would have regarded the circumstance as of no importance. But Paul’s spiritual eye saw clearly that the whole character of the dispensation was involved; Christianity itself was at stake. And Paul did not spare that in Peter which was to be condemned; he did not screen him, but exposed before all the evil that was working. He killed, not Peter indeed, but that which, at the moment, in Peter was contrary to what both he and Peter had known of God. Peter might well speak of Paul afterwards as “our beloved brother Paul”; no [p. 164] doubt he felt deeply how much he owed to Paul’s faithful love. The incident serves to shew how subtle are the influences of evil against which we have to be on our guard, as tending to draw us out of the way in which we have been commanded to walk. Every such test, if gone through with God, will confer spiritual confirmation and gain, but if we yield in what may seem to be small matters greater defection will soon follow.
Certain evils may be “near unto thee” (verse 7). They are so like the truth as to deceive the unwary. We should always bear in mind that opposition to the truth in the last days is “in the same manner in which Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses” (2 Timothy 3: 8). The truth is withstood by imitation; the evil thing is very like the real and divine thing. It has the form of what is right without the spiritual power and vitality of it. The nearer things are the more deceptive and dangerous they are if they are not of God.
Then, on the other hand, there are evil influences which are “far from thee”. Teachings which are so far-fetched, and so entirely different from anything we have known, that their very strangeness and novelty has a kind of fascination for the mind. But whether “near” or “far”, everything is to be utterly refused which has not been “heard from the beginning”. “As for you let that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you: if what ye have heard from the beginning abides in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise which he has promised us, life eternal. These things have I written to you concerning those who lead you astray: and yourselves, the unction which ye have received from him abides in you, and ye have not need that any one should teach you; but as the same unction teaches you as to all things, and is true and is not a lie, and even as it has taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2: 24 - 27).
[p. 165] Our safety lies in going on with what is good and of God. “Ye shall walk after Jehovah your God, and ye shall fear him, and his commandments shall ye keep, and his voice shall ye hear; and ye shall serve him, and unto him shall ye cleave” (verse 4).