August 31, 2008
Chris Strevel

Audio

With respect to God’s holy word, death is on the line. Man may turn from God’s word and commit the slow yet certain death of individual and cultural suicide. Or, he may put corrupters of biblical religion (false prophets, inciters to apostasy) to death by the power of the civil sword, which must be ruled by God’s justice or be turned into an instrument of terror in the hands of evil men. These are man’s only two choices. If he chooses the former, he may congratulate himself that cultural openness, universal tolerance, and individual autonomy will usher in a veritable utopia of peace and human society liberated from the shackles of revealed truth. In the end, looking at his emaciated and scarred face in the mirror, he will be forced to realize that “all those who hate me love death.” God will not be mocked. His truth will prevail. Death has come to every culture that has built its philosophical, ethical, and scientific foundations upon the principle of revolt from the living God, whether that revolt was due to sin-imposed ignorance or willful rejection of once-held truth. Western culture falls into the latter category. Only the most blind and hardened think that our society is thriving. Every sane person hears the death rattle in its corporate throat. The reason for this, among all other reasons, is that we have turned from God’s word in every societal institution. He is sovereignly inflicting the divine death penalty upon us. All the efforts made toward “change” and “new beginnings” are the furious attempts of a terminally ill cancer patient to try any remedy, however bizarre and impotent, to stave off the final, inevitable moment of death.

Of course, if man chooses the latter, to put corrupters of biblical religion to death, this is not without its challenges. First, he must be absolutely persuaded that the truth he professes and defends is in fact the truth. It will not do to put men to death in the name of false religion, as Roman Catholicism did during its bloody centuries of fanatical Inquisition and suppression of true religion, or as Islamic cultures do today. Men and governments who put men to death in the name of a false god are no better than today’s globalists. They are equally driven by despair, unbelieving rebellion, and fear. Their cultures also die. Second, there can be no “lynch-law” application of the death penalty. The legal strictures of this chapter make clear that those who are finally exterminated as enemies of God and of society have been carefully examined and “tried” in order to ensure that the charge against them is true and the threatened penalty just. Third, it is therefore not the church that yields the deathly sword of justice but the state. This presupposes that only a Christian state dedicated to God’s glory and law can decree death against corrupters of biblical religion, which also implies that only Christian states have a future. By a Christian state is not meant a society ruled by the church, preachers, or religious teachers. It is a state in which God’s word determines the goals, motives, and standards of society. Fourth, the only men who will ever take the Bible seriously on this point are those who have more regard for God’s honor, zeal for his word, and commitment to purity of religion than they do for man’s approval. These are the men whom God blesses with a just and free society; these are the only men with a future.

Thus, whatever choice men make, death is unavoidably required. Yes, this chapter makes us squeamish. We have become too agnostic, too Freudian, and thus too cowardly to recognize this great truth of liberty. Freedom requires death. Truth requires death. Behind this fundamental fact of man’s existence lies a deeper “magic” or truth. It is impossible to divide life into spheres in which he can avoid the total claims of God upon his life. Whether we think of man as an individual, a family or individuals, or a city/culture of individuals, or institutions of learning, man’s response to God’s word will determine his future. Here again we see the great lie of secularism. It is the same lie that determined the cultural policies of ancient Rome and that resulted in the extinction of its once-proud and seemingly insuperable world hegemony. It is the lie that life can be compartmentalized into holy and unholy areas, that society can thrive without truth, that government can give lip-service to no religion or to a plethora of religions while remaining tolerant of all religions. This is the fantasy of the globalist dreamers and mushy-minded entertainers, like John Lennon. Unbelieving men always imagine a society in which men can do and believe as they choose. In this, they display their deep-seated antipathy to the claims of a holy God upon their lives. They are running from God inwardly; they develop cultures that seek to run from God outwardly. And, they die, as we shall die, unless the Lord revives his marvelous work among us in the midst of the years. The harbinger of such a work will be a broad-based, family by family, church by church return to the Word of God, in its entirety, regardless of personal cost or sacrifice, and with a determination to live by every word that has come from God’s mouth – or die in the struggle to do so. We, those who profess to cherish the word of God, must learn again to die – so that we may live as free men under the reign of Jesus Christ. We must be so animated by zeal for God’s glory that death is preferable to living a lie, to living without God’s unadulterated truth, to capitulating to the demands of a society that is dedicated to its own destruction.

Yet, secular globalism is not the greatest evil facing us. It is the church’s failure to understand, embrace, and proclaim the life-and-death implications of truth. If we are to survive as a culture, it will not because the right man (or woman) is elected to the highest office in our land. Unbelieving governments do not suddenly come to their senses, and if you are waiting for this, you are deluded. Something from outside the citadel must enter, interject life, and effect reformation. The only God-ordained institution for such transformation is the church – not by the ludicrous idea that the church takes over human governments or spends it time focusing upon specific political issues – but through the church fulfilling its mission of being the “pillar and ground” of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). The church must stop seeking accommodation with the spirit of the age. It must stop giving implicit endorsement to universal tolerance, which is does by not censuring its own members, allowing seminaries, teachers, and preachers to depart from the truth of God’s word without disciplinary consequences, and tolerating all manner of autonomy in the worship, teaching, and discipline of local congregation. Said another way, the church must again accept death as the consequence of turning from the truth. It must be willing to die to itself, its own delusional dreams of acceptance by academics, secular accreditation agencies, and its desire for respect from cultural movers and shakers. There must be no respect for non-truth. We must press the antithesis – in our preaching, in our personal lives, and in our public defense of Scripture. We do this in recognition that the sword of the gospel must slay us – our selfishness, our desire to be as God, and our hubris. It is only as we die to these things that the power of our Savior’s resurrection will effectually operate in our lives, thus giving us strength and resolve to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil. Then, and only then, will the Lord fight for us, deliver us from tyranny, and give us a land in which we can serve him in sincerity and truth. Remember, the Lord rules over all things for the sake of the church (Eph. 1:19-23). He is using the current death-reign of secularism to expose and root out our sins, fear, and compromise.

* “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,

* and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which 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 know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

* You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.

But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which neither you nor your fathers have known,

some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other,

you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him.

But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.

You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you.

If you hear in one of your cities, which the LORD your God is giving you to dwell there,

that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods,' which you have not known,

then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you,

you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword.

You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again.

None of the devoted things shall stick to your hand, that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger and show you mercy and have compassion on you and multiply you, as he swore to your fathers,

if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, keeping all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of the LORD your God.”

Against False Prophets (vv. 1-5)

Moses’ general theme remains worship, and this leads him to consider God’s holy word, for in it alone we learn the right way to worship him and live for his glory. He assumes, and rightly so, that God’s word is an inestimable treasure, and that for our heavenly Father to give us the opportunity to hear it and the heart to heed is life’s choicest blessing. His word not only shows us the way we may know God and learn to please him in all ways, but Scripture also serves as the bond of his covenant with us. Since we also know that the Lord is pleased to test our faith, we can expect him to try us at this very point, whether we will be absolutely committed to live by every word that comes from his mouth, however much Satan and wicked men rage against us and seek to undermine our confidence in his word and zeal in obeying it. Of course, we may expect attacks from unbelieving men outside the church, for they hate God’s word. Whether they come under the cloak of pretended friendship, as many ostensibly “Christian” scholars do, or are unmasked in their hostility toward God, the world will do all in its power to weaken our steadfast allegiance to the word of God. Moses, however, like Paul, begins by reminding us that the most poisonous attacks against God’s truth often spring up from our midst (cf. Acts 20:30). Here, Moses envisions a prophet or dreamer of dreams, for God often revealed his will through such means in the days before the biblical canon was completed, who performs dramatic signs or wonders to confirm the truth of his words. Having obtained our attention by these apparent confirmations of his legitimacy and authority, he encourages us to turn from the Lord and serve other gods. Our response is simple. We are not to listen to him. Even if his signs and wonders are dramatic and momentarily arrest our attention, such a person is inspired by Satan, who often masquerades as an angel of light and is sometimes permitted by God to perform amazing feats in order to lead the simple and unwary astray from their pure devotion to God (2 Cor. 11:14-15). Said simply, all direct attacks or veiled plots against God’s word are from the devil, whether they proceed from the world or from men within the church herself.

Here it may be demanded whether the devil can prophesy or no. I stand not so much upon that; it is not material. But I have answered before that God is above him and that it is his will that his church should live in warfare to the end that the faith of all his might be exercised. Then if a deceiver foretells a thing and the same shall fall out in deed, it is not to be said but that God has given him the bridle. Therefore it is not for us to trouble ourselves greatly whether Satan foresees things to come or no. For it is very certain that notwithstanding all the craft and subtlety that is in him, yet he knows not any more than our Lord imparts unto him. And all is to deceive the unbelievers according to their desert, or else to show that do what he can, yet shall he never get the upper hand of the chosen.i

We are to close our ears to the words of any man or woman who seeks to weaken our confidence and devotion toward God’s word. Such heresies may be novel and creative, appear innocent, or even obtain the approval of many. Examples of these abound: the church’s capitulation to naturalism in the last century, its subsequent rejection of the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture, more modern charismatic outbursts that enthroned the “Spirit” at the expense of Scripture, and the current regime of polytheistic toleration of other religions. In each of these and many similar betrayals of God’s word, the leaders of apostasy sprang from within the church. Each incident was motivated by the desire to conform God’s word to the spirit of the age, to make the Bible more palatable to unbelieving men and philosophies. These doctrines often come with dramatic signs and wonders. In our days, the most approved signs of divine approval are academic respectability and acceptance, cultural recognition, swelling numbers, manifestations of spiritualistic enthusiasm, and personal satisfaction and sense of fulfillment. Nevertheless, we are not to listen. We are not to be curious or even to investigate them, for by curiosity many have been led astray. With respect to young people, for example, we painfully witness them heeding the fell voices of these apostate sirens: “Try this; don’t believe something just because your parents and church do. Experiment. We have tried thus and so; we think it works. All truth is relative; find your own truth.” God will have us shut our ears firmly against any idea, person, or movement that turns our attention from his word and leads us away from pure devotion to him. His Scriptures are our life and authority. All other worldviews are Satan’s attempt to supplant the authority of God in our lives and will produce death in us if we follow them. We are unable to sit in judgment of God’s word. It is Satan’s chief lie that we are to “know good and evil for ourselves.” This many do today, and it is the philosophy of our age that each must discover his own truth. This is an unwarranted adventure, and one that shipwrecks the faith of most upon the jagged rocks of uncertainty and despair. Our faith is simpler and surer. We receive whatever God has said in his word as our life and salvation, without thinking that we are sufficient to traverse heaven and earth to find the truth for ourselves. We will not find truth upon such a quest but only death. We are to be as little children – humble, trusting, and absolutely dependent upon the word of our heavenly Father, which word we now have completed in his Scriptures.

And therefore let us bear well in mind that we ought so little consent to false prophets as we should not in anywise give ear unto them but shun them afar off as soon as we perceive that they go about to deceive us and to entice us to naughtiness. And to say the truth, this cursed curiosity has been the cause of many men’s destruction. For it seems to many high-minded persons that all things should pass the trial of their wit, and that when they have sifted things after their own imagination, they may follow whatever they themselves think good, for they are able enough to discern the truth of all things…It is too high a mounting for men to make themselves judges and umpires of God’s truth, which the angels do honor with such reverence.ii

It may seem strange for Moses to say that all such attacks, though they originate with the father of lies, are ultimately tests from God, to see whether we will love him with all our heart and soul. Why would our heavenly Father, who knows our great weakness and susceptibility to Satan’s lies, test us in this fashion? Does he desire our downfall? Whenever God tests the righteous, it is to expose our weakness, lead us away from self-reliance, and teach us to humble ourselves under his hand. Those that fall prey to such malevolent spirits do not belong to God, for his testing exposes them as false sons who will not abide by his pure truth. With respect to God’s church, because the anointing of the Spirit never departs from us if we are true sons (1 John 2:27), God’s tests will not produce our downfall but our greater stability and regard for God’s word. Yet, God will test us at this very point, for it is the fundamental test of covenant faithfulness: God’s word or man’s? The spirit of our age or sola Scriptura? “Signs and wonders” or humble faith in our heavenly Father’s word? Therefore, we must expect, even as we are experiencing today, tests, for many false teachers are gone out into our world. Many of them stand behind pulpits each week, telling religious seekers to look within themselves, that God loves them just as they are, that Jesus is a force to make a man wealthy and healthy. They baptize worldly principles of human pride and self-sufficiency with pseudo-Christian jargon. They perform signs and wonders galore. The pressure is great to compromise, to avoid Bible narrowness, to think that truth is putty that can be shaped according to the desires of each man. Our heavenly Father knows the virulence of these attacks. Through them, he is refining our faith, teaching us to live by faith, and guiding us to live of simple devotion to his word. He is teaching us to remain on the path of life, however giddy, more respected by the world, and “hip” those are who are running off the cliff of human autonomy. The Lord would keep us safe upon the certain path of faith and obedience to his word, and his testing in this area exposes our weakness and leads us to humble ourselves before him and seek his omnipotent grace that we may stand strong against all the malice of Satan and treachery of deceitful men.

For our Lord thinks it not enough that the faithful should serve him and hold them to hi truth when they are in quiet and without temptation, but also he will have them yield such trust unto his word that if the devil fall to sowing of his darnel [wild, weedy grass] to mar all, and wicked men rise up to deface the truth by all the mean they can and to turn it into lies, such as have learned what the true religion means should not change nor be fickle and inconstant, but show that the things which they know are of God, and an abiding truth, so as it is not for men to swerve or start from them in any wise.iii

O how we see the Lord testing us today at this most fundamental point of the faith! To some, even this statement belies a narrowness . How dare we say there is a “the faith” rather than simply “faith!” Even evangelical authors increasingly write as if the Holy Spirit teaches men outside of Scripture, even against Scripture. Some even suggest, though it is difficult to fathom and technically banishes them from the evangelical camp, that the Holy Spirit is working in other religions and faiths, revealing truth that Christians should recognize and utilize. These are some of the many “false prophets” in our midst who are seeking to lead us away from the word of God. The most common is the wretched idea that truth is relative. This is philosophical gibberish, the squabble of angry babies who are furious because their cherished dream of relativism simply will not work in the real world but instill inside upon having their irrational, culture-destroying way. Our children are special targets of Satan in this regard, for he learned long ago that his lie will not sell if presented in all its hideousness. If it is dressed up, however, if its mouthpieces are musically talented, physically beautiful, or personally winsome, the young will embrace his lie willingly. Within the church, so unwilling are the majority of members willing to contend earnestly for “the faith,” that they long ago gave up doctrinal precision and exegetical preaching, both of which are based upon the biblical conviction that our heavenly Father speaks, speaks objectively and coherently, and has spoken definitively and finally in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit-inspired Scriptures (1 Cor. 2:10-14; Heb. 1:1). Instead of truth, professing believers are fed a consistent diet of fast-food spirituality, “principles” for living, and all manner of other wretched pabulum that keeps them spiritual babies and in need of weekly religious therapy to make them feel good about their otherwise pathetic spiritual-consumer existence. The Lord is testing us. Will we remain firmly convicted of the truth of his word, or will we capitulate to the spirit of relativism and autonomy that hangs over the church like the specter of death? Finding that the church is fragmented, distracted, and frustrated in its infantile paralysis, will we conclude that “since our leaders cannot come to an agreement,” maybe God’s truth is not all that important, or clear, or relevant to my life.” Many do. They give up before God’s testing is barely begun.

For those who love God’s word, however, we must remain firmly persuaded of the truth of God’s word, in its entirety, for our faith and life, without needing any supplementation from our reason or experience. We must “walk after the Lord” (v. 4), which entails strenuous pursuance of truth, keep his commandments, obey his voice, serve him, and cling unto him. The combination of these standard Deuteronomy-commands to covenant loyalty indicates that abiding in the word of God is our only security and guarantee that we shall “pass” the Lord’s testing. Let us hold to this simple and pure faith in God’s word – implicitly, without dangerous curiosity about the death-dens of spiritual anarchy masquerading as churches, confident that after the Lord has sufficiently sifted and refined us, he will again cause the light of his truth to dawn upon our churches. In the meantime, we must remember that God is not bound to save by many or by few, and we must stand where we are – trusting, vigilant in prayer, armed with truth and righteousness – confident that the truth of God will prevail over the gates of hell.

Yet, this is not simply a personal moral issue, a private spiritual battle we must fight. The Lord prescribes the death penalty for false prophets that lead men away from exclusive faith in his word. This means, among other things, that heresy and apostasy from God’s word are social evils as well as personal ones. Private men cannot execute; only the civil authority has the power of the sword (Rom. 13:1-8). Ultimately, God is the King and Governor of the nations, and now that he has exalted his resurrected Son to his right hand, all nations are to swear fealty to him and to develop their social and civil institutions in terms of his word. Secularists, of course, will bewail this as hopelessly primitive and barbaric, destructive of a free society, and religiously bigoted in the extreme. God takes a different view. Secularism itself is barbaric apostasy from God. The pundits of secularism are the new false prophets that lead men and nations away from the path of life. They may regard the biblical prescription of the death penalty as evidence of an abysmally low regard for human life. In fact, secularism does not have a high regard for human life. Its abortuaries, endorsement of genocide, and imperialism are sufficient to expose their death-loving ways. We cringe at this law for two main reasons. First, we no longer believe that there is such a thing as truth, and no one but the deluded is ever willing to die for private truth. Second, we put complete confidence in human autonomy and loathe the glory of God. It is not, then, that we have such high regard for human life; it is that we have no regard for the honor and majesty of God. We cannot avoid, therefore choosing death. Because, however, we let the false prophets live, we choose cultural death.

There is absolutely nothing in this death penalty command that is limited to Israel’s political structure. Yes, God was King of Israel in a unique sense. However, it is clear from the Old Testament that God’s unique work in Israel is now universalized through the person and work of Jesus Christ (Deut. 4:6-8). Hence, that nation or kingdom that will not serve him will be utterly destroyed (Isa. 49:23; 60:12). Kings and judges must “kiss the Son” (Ps. 2:9), specifically in their capacity of rule and judgment. Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Tim. 6:15), the “prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5). Every knee will bow to him – in history, throughout history, and at the end of history – or know death – personal, familial, and cultural. Granted, his work is not equally “intensive,” at least to our view, during every era, but examples abound of the consequences of refusing to bow the knee to him. Therefore, only a Christian society can avoid the cultural death penalty, for only a Christian society will bow the knee to Messiah the Prince and enforce the death penalty against all those who draw men away from the truth. As the Holy Spirit brings renewal out of death, he will teach us again the lifewide implications of submission to God’s truth. Among other things, we will recover the ancient belief that those who lead men away from God, publicly, without repentance, and duly convicted of their crime (cf. v. 14), must be put to death in order to stave off divine judgment and uphold covenant loyalty to the triune God, the Lord of hosts.

To be short, whosoever he is that speaks so [against the death penalty for false prophets], he is not to be taken for an ignorant person, seeing he would that all false doctrines should be unpunished, but rather he is to be counted a despiser of God and an upholder of the devil, who seeks nothing else but the turning of all things upside down in the world…Then let us not think that this law is a special law for the Jews, but let us understand that God intends to deliver us a general rule to which we must tie ourselves…Therefore must we need conclude that our Lord will have princes and magistrates to use the sword that is given them to the maintenance of his honor and of the unity of faith and good agreement…iv

Against Idolatrous Family Members (vv. 6-11)

Loyalty to God’s word is not limited to resisting those outside us, as if the Lord only tests us through strangers. It is one thing, then, to prescribe the death penalty for corrupters of true religion and of God’s holy truth, the demands of covenant loyalty are far more personal when it touches our family connections. Moses applies the same teaching of verses one through five to our dearest family members: brother, son, daughter, “wife of the bosom,” or a near and dear friend. If any of these begins to teach men to turn from the living God, it is the responsibility of the faithful not only to hand them over to the authorities God has ordained for the preservation of his law and order but also to make our hand the first against them. Lest we cringe at this command, we should remember the words of our Savior, who may well have been thinking in general terms of this passage when he said: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). And, “A man’s foes shall be those of his own household” (v. 35; cf. Luke 14:26). The purpose of this law is not to turn family members against one another or to make the home into an institution of inquisition and thought control. Moses’ point is far deeper. Truth trumps family connections. The demands and privileges of God’s covenant come before even the deepest human ties of blood and affection. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important than the truth of God’s word. That his family was to be the first hand against the offender was intended to make this point, this public confession. This apostasy or heresy has arisen from my kin; I will take the lead in eradicating it to demonstrate that “as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” The death by stoning served no other purpose than to demonstrate publicly the unspeakable evil of attempting to turn men away from the truth of God’s word. When the godly family, and, unfortunately, Israel’s history demonstrates that they did not obey this law very often, took the lead in standing with God against an evil family member, the Lord says that their stand will be deterrence to similar apostasy in the future (v. 11).

Before we take to lampooning Moses for such a law, we do well to remember that most of the world’s evil began and was recognized first in the perpetrator’s family. Most families, however, refuse to allow anything to come between continued relations with their family members. We see today that parents will allow their young adult children to fornicate in the home or fear of severing the relationship by condemning the actions of their delinquent children. The family will not stand against sodomite “coming out parties,” choosing instead to practice perverse “unconditional” love. The church is little better. Rarely is found that congregation that will practice church discipline against its members for stubborn, persistent evidence of moral or doctrinal wickedness. If a church happens to practice discipline against one of its members, his family will leave the church, siding with the devil rather than with Christ [assuming, of course, that the discipline was legitimate]. The point is that our love is twisted and wicked. We cannot love our families in a way that honors God if we place family connections before covenant loyalty. Blood is not the thickest or most fundamental human connection; loyalty to God’s covenant is. Thus, our families will also experience the death penalty, as we see today, unless we repent of our autonomy and idolization of the family at the expense of God’s truth. While the thought of siding against a family member in favor of God’s truth may be sad and sobering, if we have zeal for the glory of God, nothing will be as important to us as his truth. And if we would truly see our wayward family and church members recovered to the truth, the only remedy is to stand for God’s truth, thereby showing them that nothing in this life is more important than devotion to God and his word.

And let us learn by that which is told us here that each of us must bear such zeal to the maintenance of God’s honor as not to spare any kin or friend if they step up to set themselves against him to whom we belong and to whom we owe all service, going about to overthrow his seat and to disappoint him that he may no m ore reign among us. And therefore whensoever God’s honor is darkened or diminished among us, let each of us in his state look to it that we are so zealous as to redress it, to the uttermost of his power.v

Against Apostate Cities (vv. 12-18)

Moses now turns to a larger example of apostasy from God and corruption of his truth: an entire city. If this seems farfetched, remember that Charleston, Boston, Atlanta, Richmond, and numerous other cities in our nation were once bastions of Christian truth; now they are cesspools of secularism and every form of godlessness. In the event that an entire city turns away from the Lord, the death penalty is again prescribed, but only after a clearly defined legal process to ascertain guilt is followed. “Inquire,” “make search,” and “ask diligently” are not mob watchwords but evidence of defined legal structures (Prov. 18:7; 25:2; Job 13:9; 28:27; Ps. 44:21; Jer. 17:10). Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh were once saved from extermination because the other tribes followed this law and ascertained that the charge of apostasy was in fact false (Josh. 22:9ff.). If, however, the charge is true, the city, its entire population, and all its goods are to be utterly destroyed, burned with fire, in effect as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. By this, his righteous anger is satisfied, the sanctions of his covenant enforced, and the remainder of the nation freed from any tinge of guilt that would accrue to it through toleration of idolatry and religious corruption in one its parts (v. 17) Turning away from the Lord places everything in the apostate city under the “ban” of God’s judgment. Presumably, the complete population is guilty because it did not follow the laws revealed in the first part of the chapter. If even one man had brought the charge, then the city might have been saved. Not even one man did, so the entire city is destroyed. As in the cases of verses one through five and six through eleven, there is to be no pity for corrupters of God’s truth – only zeal for God’s glory and covenant loyalty to his word. The city is to remain a heap of ashes as a testimony to the awful consequences of apostasy from God. And since verse 18 describes the actions of this chapter as “right in the eyes of the Lord,” we cannot gainsay his wisdom or right to dispose of men and nations as he sees fit.

Underlying the laws of this chapter is an important presupposition – there is such a thing as truth, and the truth has been revealed by the living God. Admittedly, relatively few today confess this presupposition, and a leading reason to reject their agnosticism is the destroyed lives and cultures left in the wake of human autonomy. Godless men utterly ridicule these laws, but God will have the last laugh, for every civilization that builds its institutions upon the sinking sand of human experience will be washed away by the tide of his judgment and the wake of the rising kingdom of his Son. Yet, the question remains: how can we be sure we have the truth? I would suggest that we must begin with total self-distrust in our own wisdom and experience. Then, we must believe God’s promise that if we will ask, seek, and knock, we will receive, find, and find the door of truth opened to us. Yet, all our asking and seeking must be oriented around his revealed will in Scripture, for we shall not find the truth within ourselves. Jesus Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). His claim is absolute. Everyone that abides in him will abide in the light; outside him there is nothing but the blackest darkness. Finally, we must be humble, constant, and prayerful students of his word. His word is our sword and our shield, our protection against Satan’s attacks and deceptions, as well as the world’s pressure to compromise. If you abide in Christ’s word, you will bear much fruit. God will be glorified. You will have boldness to stand against the autonomous, apostate spirit of our age, even if you sometimes find you must stand alone. Remember, the failure of even one man to stand against apostasy results in the destruction of an entire city. There are many believers in this land. If we stand for God’s truth boldly, deny ourselves, and take up our Savior’s cross, God’s truth will bring salvation to men, nations, and cultures.

i Calvin, Sermons, at Deut. 13:2.

ii Calvin, Sermons, at Deut. 13:3.

iii Calvin, Sermons, at Deut. 13:1.

iv Calvin, Sermons, at Deut. 13:5.

v Calvin, Sermons, at Deut. 13:6.