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Man, Deuteronomy chapter number 13, the Bible reads in verse number 1, If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and give it thee a sign or a wonder. Now another word for a sign or wonder is a miracle. So this guy, he comes and he speaks prophetically and he even performs a miracle, possibly. And the sign or the wonder come to pass so that whatever this miraculous thing actually happens, whatever he predicted miraculously, or whatever he actually carried out as a sign or wonder, if it come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee. So basically this miracle or sign or prediction or whatever it is, is connected to preaching that tells you to worship other gods. So he says, let us go after other gods which thou has not known and let us serve them. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proveth you, proveth you means he tests 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 cleave unto him. So the Bible is saying that there could be people who come along and they're false prophets and they're going to tell you, hey, let's go worship other gods. Here's the proof that I am actually speaking to you authoritatively from the true God or gods. I'm going to perform a miracle or I'm going to make a prophecy that's going to come true or whatever. Now this is so important that we realize that the devil and his minions will often do lying signs and wonders. Just because someone does a miracle does not mean that they're of God. Remember in the book of Exodus, Moses is doing all kinds of incredible miracles before Pharaoh and his household, but Pharaoh's sorcerers were able to replicate some of those miracles, not all of them, but they were able to do some miracles as well. I mean, they were able to do some kind of incredible things like throw down their staff and it becomes a serpent. I mean, that's pretty incredible. Does that mean that they had the power of God on their side? No. And of course, Moses serpent ate their serpents. But the thing is in second Thessalonians chapter two in the New Testament, we have an important prophecy about the man of sin, also known as the antichrist. And the Bible talks about how he will do lying signs and wonders. And then, of course, we go to the book of Revelation and read chapter 13, which is probably the most detailed chapter in Revelation with regard to the antichrist. And in chapter 13, we've got the part where the false prophet comes along and says that they should make an image to the beast. They should make an image to the antichrist. And the Bible says that he does great wonders. He makes fire come down from heaven. And he does these amazing things in order to deceive those that dwell on the earth. So we got both second Thessalonians chapter two and Revelation 13, warning us that the antichrist and his false prophet are going to do lying signs and wonders. Then we've got Deuteronomy chapter 13, warning us that they're going to be false prophets and dreamers of dreams who will do signs and wonders. Do not believe them if they're telling you to go worship other gods. Bottom line is this. The word of God is the final authority. And if someone is speaking against the word of God, it doesn't matter what miracle they do, you go with the Bible. You go with the word of God. You don't be like the Mormons, where you don't care what the Bible says because you know what you felt, that burning in your bosom that you felt. Well, you know what? First of all, a lot of that could be people's imagination, the burning in the bosom. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's not a demonic burning in the bosom that Satan manifests in Mormons. That wouldn't surprise me one bit because they're definitely worshiping Satan in their Mormon temple. They literally openly worship Lucifer in that temple, whether they're smart enough to see it or not. I shouldn't say smart enough because they're blinded spiritually. So even if they're normally intelligent people, they're spiritually blinded. But if a born again Christian dispassionately watches those videos of that ceremony in the Mormon temple because now you've got these tiny little cameras that people can sneak in. And there are people who have snuck them in and filmed those ceremonies that in the past could have never been filmed because, you know, you got to change your clothes and put on their clothes. So it'd be very difficult in the past to smuggle in any kind of a recording device. But now these things are so tiny. You know, I'm not going to ask how they got it in there, but they figured out a way to get it in there. Okay. And, uh, in these videos, they're literally just worshiping Satan. Okay. Because you say, well, pastor Anderson, are you exaggerating a little bit there? Well, no, no, no. I watched the video. They literally watch a video in the ceremony where they act out the events of the garden of Eden and they have Adam and Eve. And then Satan comes to tempt Adam and Eve. And when Satan comes to tempt Adam and Eve in the Mormon temple ceremony, he's wearing an apron and Adam and Eve ask him, what is that apron that you're wearing? And he says, this is the symbol of my power and my priesthood. Lucifer says that then a couple of minutes later, they're naked. They've eaten of the forbidden fruit. And then God is coming and Lucifer tells them, oh, quick, put on these aprons. Then they stopped the video and all the Mormons that are gathered there, they tell them all, okay, now all you Mormons, now you put on your aprons and they all go and they put on a white apron. So literally Lucifer says, put on this apron, the symbol of my power and my priesthood. Next thing you know, they pause the video and say, okay, everybody put on your apron. And all of the people, all the initiates in that, and this is called the endowment ceremony specifically, they all put on the apron and they keep that apron on for the entire rest of the ceremony. They keep that apron on, they just keep wearing it. The symbol of Lucifer's power and priesthood, they're wearing that symbol for the entire rest of the ceremony. Then about a half hour later, when they're learning the secret handshakes that are going to get them into heaven, because there's a curtain and there's a guy on the other side of the curtain, he sticks his hand through the curtain and they have to do a special handshake that they're going to have to do when they die in order to get into heaven. When they're learning those handshakes, they literally say, power and the priesthood be upon me and on my seed forever. While they're wearing the apron that literally Lucifer said, this is the symbol of my power and my priesthood, those exact words. Then a half hour later, they're like, power and priesthood, who's power and priesthood? What power and priesthood? Is it that apron you're wearing? How can anyone not see that they're literally binding themselves to Lucifer in the ceremony? Not only that, Lucifer says in the ceremony, they make all these vows not to do this sin, not to do that sin, not to do that sin. Then Lucifer says, if you break any of these vows, you'll be under my power forever. It's the type of things where literally no one could not break these vows because it's just like, one of them is that they're not allowed to laugh loudly. They will abstain from all loud laughter. You know, so there, I'm busted right there. But they're going to abstain from all loud laughter. But there's a whole list of all these other things that no one could ever be perfect. It's like we've been talking about in Galatians and I've been preaching through Galatians how, you know, no one can keep the whole law. You know, cursed is everyone that continue with not in all the words of the book of the law to do them. But Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. Whereas these people are literally binding themselves to Satan and saying that they're going to be under Satan's power forever if they don't keep all these vows. Like as if keeping rules, keeping vows, keeping the law can somehow save us. When in reality we're saved by faith in Jesus Christ, Christ has already redeemed us from the curse of the law. Why would I go into some temple and put myself under some new curse? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. But let me put myself under a new curse, this time with Lucifer, it's madness. Now in the past, people didn't know about these ceremonies because like I said, it was impossible to sneak in a camera and they're not allowed to talk about it. Even if people do talk about it, you don't really know, are they telling the truth? Are they exaggerating? Because like, as I'm saying this right now, some people could easily think that maybe I'm exaggerating or putting my spin on it, but yet the videos are out there on YouTube. I've sat and watched them repeatedly and that's what they are. You know, and this, this ceremony happens in multiple temples across America and you can watch multiple videos of it and it's in essence the same pattern in all of them. And the videos are real. And so, you know, anyway, that was a little bit of a rabbit trail, but the point is that Satan will do lying signs and wonders. And so therefore it would not surprise me at all if Satan gives them some kind of a burning in their bosom as they're reading the Book of Mormon and these, these demonic Mormon missionaries have some kind of a burning in the bosom, some kind of a miraculous little lying sign and wonder that they do. But believe them not, because they're teaching lies, because they're speaking against what the Bible says, which is salvation by grace through faith, not of works that any man should boast. And they're teaching all this garbage about how there are other gods on other planets and it's, it's all lies. And that's the type of thing that God's warning about here. People going by their feelings, people going by something that they see, a miracle, some kind of a sign or wonder or prophecy that came true. Do not let that stuff ever supersede what's written in the Bible. What's written in the Bible is the final authority. And that's what the Bible is saying here. Verse five, and that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he had spoken to turn you away from the Lord, your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage to thrust thee out of the way, which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shall thou put the evil away from the mystery. Here's how you get rid of the evil. You just kill the guy who's teaching you to worship these false gods. Here's how you get rid of Baal worship. You kill all the prophets of Baal. You throw them off a cliff and that's what they end up doing in various Bible stories. Right? And then of course the famous story where Elijah faces off with the prophets of Baal and they end up just all being slain with the sword. Right? 450 prophets of Baal, 400 prophets of the groves, kill them all, right? And then of course there's Jehu and, and his wonderful program of Baal. That's I love that story. And it's so depressing when Jehu ends up, you know, going astray and not following the Lord. Cause you just, you just, you're just like, this guy's awesome. You know, he says, Hey, I'm going to hold the biggest worship service to Baal ever. You know, previous guys have worshiped Baal a little bit. I'm going to worship Baal a lot. And he says, we're here to have the biggest Baal conference, BaalCon. And they all come to BaalCon and he gets them all. He says, okay, we got a special outfit for everybody. Everybody puts eyes. He says, Hey, make sure we don't have any worshipers of the Lord here, right? Nobody are worse than the Lord. All right, great. And then he just kills all of them. And he tells his soldiers, he says, if you let one of these pieces of trash get out of here, he says, your life will go, we'll kill you instead of him. If you let one of these guys go. And it just says, that's how he just eradicated Baal worship from Israel. He just put them all in one conference and just wiped them all out. Now obviously we're living in the new Testament. Obviously we do not fight a flesh and blood battle. Obviously the old covenant was a thing for back then and it, and it ended up not working because of the fact that even with all these wonderful rules in place and let's face it, the rules are perfect. The law of the Lord is perfect. What's the problem? The problem is human beings. And so the law was not able to bring in righteousness. It wasn't able to produce a righteous nation or a righteous people. In the new Testament though, we have something better than the law. We have the Holy Spirit. And so new Testament Christianity does what the old Testament failed to do. New Testament Christianity does provide a righteous people. Christianity does provide not only just the rules, but the actual power to live by the rules through the power of the Holy Spirit. Obviously the local church is a superior institution to the old Testament nation of Israel. In the old, one way to read the old Testament is to see it as God trying various things and them not working. Obviously God knows everything, but he goes through that process to show us the need for Christ, right? The law is our schoolmaster to lead us unto Christ. Now that Christ has come, we're no longer under the schoolmaster. We've reached a better age right now because we're now in the new Testament. We're under grace. We're not under the law. It's superior. And so this thing of just, well let's just kill all the false prophets. I mean, here's the thing, earlier God just basically wiped out everybody on the whole planet except Noah and his family, right? Did that solve the problems of the world? No. This law is another attempt to solve the problems of this world and it ends up not working. Not because there's a problem with the law, but because of the fact that human beings did not enact this properly. And so the reason I bring that up is because obviously God has not called us to physically go out and kill false prophets. We're not just going to go out and find those stinking Jehovah's Witnesses with the Tower of Doom and we're just going to just, you know, slaughter them all. No we're not. Because that's not what God has called us to do. You know, we're here to fight a spiritual battle by preaching the word of God, shining the light of the gospel. There are always going to be false prophets and always going to be false teachers. Even if you do like Jehu and wipe them all out, was that really the end of veil worship forever? No. It just, it just wiped it out for a time obviously. And so we are not going to actually put a false prophet to death in the New Testament. Okay. But does that mean that this scripture has no relevance to us today? Of course we know that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. So what we would learn from this today as we read this is that number one, we should always trust what the word of God says and stay true to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. No matter what some dreamer or worker of miracles comes along and tells us, there could be lying signs and wonders. But number two, the fact that he is saying to them in the Old Testament, put that false prophet to death so that you can put away evil from among you. That obviously shows us that God is not tolerant of false religion. God is not okay with false religion. God is not ambivalent about. I mean, he feels very strongly about it. God hates false religion. And we should hate false religion too. And we should not tolerate it or think that, well, you know, it's no big deal. We're all kind of worshiping the same God. Let's focus on what we have in common. You know, we should stand as a church against the religions of this world. And we should proudly proclaim that Christ is the only way. And I say, you say, well, probably, but here's the thing. God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the one thing that we can boast in and glory in is in the cross of Jesus Christ. And so we should get up and say, Christ is the only way Buddha leads to damnation, Hinduism leads to damnation, Judaism leads to damnation, Islam leads to damnation. And you say, well, that's not very nice. Well, is this very nice? Killing false prophets? So again, we're not going to physically kill them, but you know what? We're going to spiritually slay them with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So I'm not going to get up here behind the pulpit and handle false prophets with kid gloves. I'm going to get up here and slice them and dice them with the word of God. And I'm not going to be respectful because God didn't respect Cain and God didn't respect Cain's offering. So I don't have respect for Islam or for Muslim teachers or teachers of any of these heresies. Now, here's the thing. That doesn't mean that we are to be hateful toward the followers of these religions because they're victims. They're being deceived. We're talking about the teachers of these false religions, the architects of these false religions. Joe Catholic or Joe Hindu or Joe Shlomo isn't the problem. The problem is the ones who are teaching these things and the ones who are leading people to follow these false religions, right? The false prophets of this world, that prophet that tells you, you know, go worship other gods or don't worship the Lord, you know, put them to death. The Bible says, you know, so that just shows you how God feels about it because God feels the same way now as he felt that, you know, obviously the law is different in the sense that now we are not living in the Old Testament nation of Israel. We're supposed to follow the laws of the land that we live in in the New Testament. And so we're not going to enact this because we're not in power. And obviously in the New Testament, there's not this idea of, uh, forcing everyone to worship the Lord because in the New Testament is a whosoever will type message is a voluntary message. And so we're living in different times, but the principle, do you see how the principle still applies though? What's the overarching principle. Don't listen to some guy just cause he did a miracle and guys who are preaching false doctrine are super wicked and we should feel very negatively toward them just like God does. And we should, uh, you know, really let them have it in our preaching at least, albeit not physically. So he says, you know, this guy's trying to thrust you out of the way, which the Lord commanded thee to walk in. And so shall thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. Look at verse six though. This is where it gets close to home. If thy brother, the son of thy mother or the, or thy son or thy daughter or the wife of thy bosom or thy friend, which is as thine own soul entice these secretly saying, let's go and serve other gods, which thou has not known nor thy fathers, namely of the gods of the people, which around about you nine to the or far off from the, from the one end of the earth, even on the other end of the earth, thou should not consent unto him. So if this is a close friend, relative, brother, sister, son, daughter, even wife, I mean, you can't really get any closer than this. I mean, does he have to say you're Siamese twin? You know, he's saying, look, anybody who's related to you, if they come to you secretly and start telling you, Hey, we're going to worship other gods. We're going to, we're going to forsake the Lord. It says, don't consent. Don't go along with him. No matter how much you love the person. Don't go along with them nor hearken unto him. Makes sense, right? Don't consent. Don't listen to him. All right. This is about to escalate. Neither shall thou nigh pity him. Neither shall thou spare. Neither shall thou conceal him. Thou shalt surely kill him. Okay. So look, what's God saying here? He's saying, look, people who are preaching a false religion and trying to proselytize people to a false religion, put them to death. And by the way, if it's your mom or your brother or your sister or even your wife or your best friend, your brother, what, it doesn't matter who it is. They need to be put to death. Zero exception. Zero tolerance. I mean, that's pretty harsh stuff. Why is God taking such a hard line on this? Well, number one, because obviously we're talking about heaven and hell. Souls are at stake. And so, you know, nothing could be more damnable or more evil than preaching a false religion because you're, you're, you're sending people to hell with that. And so why should we pity someone who preached a false religion? You know, what's funny is that there's this doctrine out there that says that God loves everybody. Even, I was talking to pastor Shelley about this this week, how he kept running into people who were telling him that the people who are burning in hell right now, like Christians today, they think God loves the people that are burning in hell right now. And they, and people were even telling him that it was an act of love burning those people in hell. Like what in the world, like what kind of a stupid doctrine is that? Like burning people in hell is an act of love. What, what the hell, you know, the hell kind of love is that? Don't make no sense. What is that? What is that though? What kind of stupid stuff are people out there teaching? Well, God is love, so everything he does is loving. So it's like you need to quit, you know, taking drugs, but you should also, you need to quit trying to use philosophy to try to understand the Bible and just you and the Holy Spirit and the Bible need to just read the Bible and study and, and, and don't be spoiled by vain traditions and philosophy. You know, people get all these philosophies of, you know, well, you know, we know that God is love, so everything he does, it's like, no, just shut up and believe what the Bible says. God hates some people. There are like 21 verses that explicitly talk about God hating certain people. But, but here's the thing about that is that if God is up in heaven saying a false prophet, a false teacher, somebody who is proselytizing to a false religion, do not pity him, but I'm supposed to believe that God pities him. But can somebody explain that to me? Wouldn't that be hypocritical of God to say thine eye shall not pity him, but then God's up in heaven like, you know, I do not believe for one second that God pities false prophets because otherwise why would he tell me not to pity them? He would just tell me, Hey, I know it's sad. Cry about it, but put them to death. He's like, no, don't feel bad for these people. You know, their blood is upon their own head, but I'm supposed to believe that God's up in heaven feeling bad about it. Doesn't make any sense, does it? Now, obviously, we know that God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and that God so loved the world. So every single person in this world has been loved by God and God wanted everyone to be saved, but once that person has become a reprobate, once that person has sealed their fate, ultimately, God flat out says in the Book of Hosea, I will love them no more. So it's not that God never loved them. He did love them. Jesus died for them. Jesus loved them. He, of course, he did not want them to perish. He wanted them to come to repentance. He wanted them to be saved. I get all that, but once they get to this point where they become this super evil purveyor of false religion, he doesn't love them anymore. And he does not feel sorry for them. And he says, don't you feel sorry for them? Put them to death. Now, this is the Bible, I mean, we're supposed to be forming our view of who God is from the word of God. Am I right? Or should we just fashion a God in our own image based on philosophy and our own heart and our own ideas? No, no, no. Why are we even reading the Bible tonight? Why? I mean, why don't we just close the, why don't we just close this and just talk about how we think the universe should work? I mean, the whole reason why we have the Bible open tonight is we're trying to figure out what God thinks about things. That's what matters. Now, can I learn about God from Deuteronomy 13 or not? Because I believe I can learn about God from all passages in scripture. And this represents part of who God is. Okay. Now, obviously there's a bigger picture to who God, God's not just all wrath and kill them all, but in this chapter, there's a lot of killing going on. This is an aspect of God's character that we cannot ignore. And so we need to realize that God does get to a point with people where he says in Proverbs chapter one, I'll laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh. You know, the Bible says he that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh. Psalm two, the Lord shall have them in derision then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. He's going to break them with a rod of iron. He's going to dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Yes, God is loved, but he's also that God who dashes them in pieces, who's filled with wrath, who has no pity upon these people. Ultimately, did he love them and die for them? Yes. But when they make this choice, when they go down this dark path, eventually they cross a line where now it's no more pity because it wouldn't really make sense for God to say, uh, you know, you're not allowed to pity them, but I will pity them. Okay. And, and not only that, but we have lots of other explicit scriptures where God says that he hates these people and that they're doomed or whatever. And make no mistake about it, you know, the, the, in general, in general, people who preach a false religion are reprobates in general, throughout the Bible, false prophets and reprobates are one in the same, and there could be possibly an exception of someone who's preaching a false God, preaching heresy and lies, and they're doing it out of ignorance, you know, and, and, and they're not actually, uh, a wicked hater of God reprobate son of the devil type they're just, you know, they're just sincerely wrong and they're in ignorance, but that is the exception, not the rule throughout scripture in the new Testament chapters like second Peter chapter two and the book of Jude and also Christ preaching in Matthew chapter seven, you know, those that are preaching, uh, false gods and preaching a false salvation, false prophets in general are reprobates. Okay. And that's why in this chapter, what are these kinds of people called? Well, the Bible flat out calls them sons of Balliol in this very chapter. Now, when it says sons of Balliol in verse 13, certain men, the children of Balliol, what does that mean? Balliol, Balliol, Beelzebub, these are all related words. Okay. Balliol is Satan. These are children of Satan, children of the devil. And that is an equivalent term with reprobate children of the devil reprobates. That's what that is. And we could, you know, you could do a study and look up all the sons of Balliol in the Bible and you'll see that that is the case. And so what does it say? You know, uh, thou shalt surely kill him. Thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death afterward. The hands of all the people. So basically this, what does that mean? That means that this guy, you don't just kill him yourself. This guy is taken before the authorities. He's taken before the judges of the land. He's brought before the authorities. He's given a trial. He's not just put to death, uh, just based on the testimony of one person, but that rather, you know, he's brought to trial. And he is executed by the congregation in general. So basically you're the one who's supposed to be the first one to throw a stone though. You know, if you're the one who brings the accusation, then you have to participate in the execution and your hand will be the first upon him afterward. The hands of all the congregation. So it's not just one person carrying this out, but it's being carried out by the group. So, uh, thou shalt surely kill him. Thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death afterward. The hand of all the people. Verse 10 and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die because he had sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage and all Israel shall hear and fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you. You know what that tells me is that they obviously didn't do this. And what's what you have to remember when you're studying the law, the Mosaic law, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, is that a lot of these laws were probably literally never enacted because this is what God's telling them to do. And you know, things like the year of Jubilee, for example, there's no record in scripture of any year of Jubilee actually happening. And there are probably lots of commandments that literally were never executed. No pun intended. Uh, now perhaps this was executed a little bit, but you want to know how I know that they didn't actually follow this precept because the whole history of the nation of Israel is them constantly vacillating between worshiping the Lord, worshiping other gods, worshiping the Lord, worshiping other gods. Worshipping the Lord, worshiping other gods. If every time anybody suggested, uh, you know, Hey, it's, it's like that meme where the guy gets thrown out of the window. You know, it, the way it was supposed to work in the, in the nation of Israel was like, Hmm, you know, uh, what are we, you know, what do we do to spice up our religion? You know, I don't know, maybe we should get back to the Bible. Maybe we should, you know, evangelize a little bit. And then this guy's like, worship other gods. He should just get hurled out the window immediately. And if every single time somebody said, Hey, why don't we worship bail? Maybe we should do astral. Hey, what about these other gods? If they do, if it was just like execute him off with this head, you really think they would have just gone to bail worship like every other generation. I mean, think about it because they keep getting rid of it. They keep eradicating it and they, they fix the temple and they're all worshiping the Lord. They're chopping down the groves. They're getting rid of high places. They're breaking idols. And then a couple of decades go by, boom, they're back at it. Well, that had to start with somebody being the first guy to pull out the bail worship. And if that guy would have been executed, then everybody else would have been afraid to do it. That's what the Bible says. The Bible says that if they carry this out, what's, what's the result? All Israel shall hear and fear and shall do no more. Any such wickedness is among you. Let me ask this. Did that happen? Did all Israel here fear and not do any more wickedness like that? Then you know what that tells me? They didn't do this because that's the result of doing this, but they didn't do it. And that's why they're constantly going to bail worship. You know, because I guarantee you a lot of Christians when they read this passage, they're uncomfortable with it. Even today, they're probably not a whole lot of sermons coming out of Deuteronomy 13. And if they do, they're probably all kinds of disclaimers about how we can't figure out why the Bible says this. And we're, we're confused and hurt by it, but we just have to trust God. You know, there are probably all kinds of, uh, caveats and maybe even just skip these verses and not even think about them, but that's probably why it didn't get carried out back then either. Cause it seemed too harsh, but at the end of the day, God's the boss. They would have followed this. They actually would have saved more lives because if you just, if you just smoke that one guy who's a bail worshiper, you save a lot of souls from damnation. You save a lot of souls from death because you know, when the Assyrians come in and kill everybody, that's not, that's not pretty. When the Babylonians come in and start slaughtering people, that's not pretty. That's more death and carnage than if you would have just killed a few people. Right. And just nipped it in the bud. And that is what didn't happen. And that's why they failed. If thou shalt hearsay in one of thy cities, verse 12, which the Lord thy God has given thee to dwell. They're saying certain men, the children of Belial are gone out from among you and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city saying, let's go and serve other gods, which you have not known. So this is a city that's defecting and saying, you know, we're going to leave the orbit of worshiping the Lord and being part of the nation of Israel, serving God. We're going to defect over to worshiping this other God of a neighboring nation. You know, and, and these guys are the sons of the devil and they have deceived a city and withdrawn the inhabitants of the city. They've separated that city to go worship these false gods. If it's true, you go in and you wipe out the city. We're going to get to that in a moment. I want to get back to the family thing, because I think this is really relevant today. This thing of, Hey, if it's your brother, if it's, you know, your child, you know, if they are guilty of this capital crime, if they are enticing people to stop worshiping the Lord and to go serve these false gods, that they're trying to subvert the worship of the Lord in the nation of Israel, put them to death. Don't pity them. Don't conceal them. Don't hide them. You know what that tells me is that today in our day, when people ask a question like, well, you know, what if one of your kids turns out to be a sodomite, you know, it just shows that they don't understand this concept. I mean, that's like asking me like, well, what if one of your kids goes up to be a serial killer? Now, first of all, you know, I do believe that we have a lot of power over how our kids turn out in general. If you train up a child in the way he should go when he's old, he'll not depart from it. Obviously the exception proves the rule, but in general, upbringing goes a long way toward making sure that your kids grow up and do not become horrible people. Obviously, we're not Calvinists here. And so we do not believe that our kids are guaranteed to be saved just by virtue of being our children, because we believe that it's a personal choice, whether or not you receive Christ as savior. And that's a choice that my parents didn't make that choice for me. I made that choice myself. I had to myself put my faith and trust in Christ. Now, is it a coincidence that me and all three of my siblings, all four of us are saved? Is that a coincidence? No. Obviously, when you're bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they are exponentially more likely to get saved than somebody who's grown up in a heathen family. And so the vast majority of our children are going to be saved. Hopefully all of them, like I said, in my family, all of them are saved. I hope that all of my children will ultimately be saved. And I believe that upbringing goes a very long way toward making sure that your kids don't grow up to be rotten people. So I don't believe that there's any way that one of my kids is going to be a son. But people always love it. So, you know, what if one of your kids turns out to be gay? And usually they say something like, well, you know, statistically it's going to happen. Because they, first of all, they inflate, they think that there's as many homos out there as on their favorite sitcom. You know, and it turns out there's really not that many of them, thank God. You know, so no, statistically it isn't. Pretty much guaranteed statistically. But here's the first of all, I don't believe for one second that that's going to happen. But number two, if it were to happen, guess what? I would feel about them just like I feel about every other filthy sodomite in this world. There's your answer right there. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Because, you know, what if one of my children were a serial killer? Am I just going to be like, well, you know, we still want him over for Thanksgiving, though. We're not going to turn him into the cops because he's our son. I mean, look, if you knew that your son were a serial killer or a serial rapist or something, you know, you wouldn't just be like, well, he's our son, you know, so we still love him and we still want him over for dinner. You know, if your son's Charles Manson or something, you know, you're pretty much going to feel about him, or at least you're supposed to feel about him, pretty much like everybody else feels about Charles Manson. You know, so this idea of like, well, if they're family, and so a lot of people will say in our day like, well, you know, that queer uncle should be welcome at Thanksgiving and have your queer brother over for Christmas because he's family. And you're, no, look, if you have, let me just say this unequivocally, if you have sodomite relatives, get them out, cut them completely out of your life. Now, look, it's the New Testament. We're not advocating any kind of violence whatsoever. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood. But does that mean the principle doesn't apply? If back then, God's saying put them to death, you know, today it's cut them out of your life. You know, they should be dead to us, you know, get them out of our lives because of the fact that you don't want to expose your children to that. You don't want to have these dangerous predators around your children. You know, and, you know, and if, look, if I had a relative and I'll take it a step further, you know, we're talking about the sodomites. It's easy to understand. Yeah, cut them out. They're gross. Get them away from us. That should be how we feel about that. Biblically and just because we're human. But I'll take it a step further. You know, if I had a relative who's preaching a false gospel, who's a damnable heretic, if I had a relative and I'm not just talking about a member of a false religion, I'm talking about one of the preachers of a false religion. I'm talking about like if I had a relative who's like a Catholic priest or like a, you know, you know what I mean? I'm not just saying a Catholic. I'm saying like a Catholic priest or like or like some kind of a missionary who's preaching a false gospel or somebody who's like a purveyor of false religion, like a false teacher, false prophet, like an actual minister in a totally, I would have nothing to do with that person. And I would never have them over to my house. I would just totally cut that person off and just be like, I don't want this reprobate son of Billy all around my family. Well, they're family though. Is that what the Bible is teaching? There are certain lines that you draw, whether it's family or not, you know, obviously we're going to make a lot of allowances for our family. And, you know, we hang around with people that we wouldn't normally hang around with because they're family. But you got to draw the line somewhere when they're a reprobate, when they're a hater of God, when they're a false prophet, when they're a sodomite at that point, draw the line. You say, I don't agree with you pastor. Okay, well, you know what? Bring all the false prophets and reprobates and faggots over to your house for Thanksgiving then. Cause I don't care. Cause I'm not the one who has to be there with those human pieces of trash. You know, I'm look, you don't have to do what I say. I'm not God, but I'm up here with the text of scripture in front of me. And I'm expounding a text of scripture and giving it a new Testament application because all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, which is teaching for reproof to tell you that you're wrong about something, right? For correction, for instruction in righteousness. So isn't all scripture given by inspiration of God and profitable to instruct us and how to live righteously. And so there must be something in this passage that I, as a new Testament Christian can be corrected by, or something that I, as a new Testament Christian can use to give me instruction in righteousness, how to live a right life, you know, to reprove me for something that I'm wrong about. And so, you know, look at what the word of God is saying. I mean, I don't see how you can read the scripture and say, Hey, being a false prophet is not a big deal. I'm going to continue to be buddies with, you know, my relative, who's an apostate preacher. You know, I think that it's clear that God doesn't have any pity on these people. And so we should not have affection toward them. So anyway, as we move on here to the city level, he says, you know, if there's a whole city that just kind of breaks off and they're going to worship other gods, he basically tells them to go to war with that city. He says, thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly and all that is there in and the cattle thereof with the edge of the sword. And again, a spiritual application. I would just take the sword of the word of God. If a whole church just goes off into heresy, I'll just take the sword of the word of God and just verbally slice up that church and preach against the heresy, preach against the false doctrine. I'm not going to hold back. I'm not going to be afraid to offend when it comes to calling out damnable heresy. He says thou shalt gather all the spoil of it in the midst of the street thereof and shall burn with fire the city and all the spoiler of every wit for the Lord thy God forever. It shall be and heap forever. It shall not be built again. Here's what he's saying not to do. He said, don't go in and just kill all the people and then take over their buildings, take over their merchandise, take over their stuff, take over their cattle. He's saying no, no, no. You go in there and he's saying destroy everything. Do not take any plunder or spoils or booty because typically when you go to war you bring home the spoils of war. And there are other times in the Bible where they're allowed to have the spoil. Some of the spoil goes to the Lord. Some of the spoil goes to the people. But in this particular scenario, there's no taking of spoil. I think there's a couple reasons for this. Number one is that if these people were worshiping other gods, some of the spoils could include the accursed thing. You know, it says in verse 17, there shall cleave not of the cursed thing that I hand. You could say, hey, maybe there's some stuff that they have that is, you know, an accoutrement of false religion. You don't want to take any of that artwork or those statues or because of their precious value or metals or whatever, you know. So he doesn't want any of that to cling to you. But I think also just the fact of not of the accursed thing should cling to you. It could just be that just everything in the city is now cursed anyway. Because they're a city that switched from worshiping the Lord to worshiping false gods so that even a benign object becomes a cursed object because it came from that city, sort of like Achan, where he just takes like a wedge of gold and, you know, Babylon. And that's the accursed thing because he wasn't supposed to take it. Now, one obvious reason to why God doesn't want them to spoil the city is that if they are to spoil the city and take the stuff for themselves, then there could be a motive to maybe exaggerate and say, hey, I'm pretty sure these people are worshiping false gods. And it's just kind of a, it's a pretext to invade, you know, to invade a city and just steal their stuff. And by the way, have you ever wondered why a lot of ancient cultures, when they would bury people, they would bury people with a lot of their stuff, right? Have you ever thought about that? You know, tombs will often have a bunch of stuff. And people will say like, oh, you know, they're going to use that stuff in the afterlife or whatever. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who did believe that and have weird pagan beliefs like that, but that's probably not where that practice originally comes from. And in a lot of cultures, that's for sure not why you have tombs filled with merchandise. The reason why cultures throughout history have buried people with their stuff is because people didn't want to profit from someone's death, because then it could almost seem like, hey, I'm glad they're dead. Cause hey, we get all this stuff and it's like Christmas came early this year cause this guy died and we're dividing up all his stuff. And so we're getting, you know, so it's sort of like, hey, I feel bad about this guy, darn. I don't want to profit from it in any way. I don't want to benefit from it in any way. So, you know, you think of like the ancient Scandinavians or whatever, you know, just kind of putting everything on a boat and lighting on fire and just kind of sending it out to sea. And it's just kind of like, nobody's benefiting because of the fact that nobody wants to benefit because then it could seem like, you know, a motive to kill people or wanting them to die or rejoicing about their death cause you get their stuff. And I'm not saying that we should practice that, of course. I'm just pointing out the fact because obviously inheritance is biblical. And when, if you die, we're going to divide up your stuff. Okay. Cause we're Christians. We're not pagans. We're not going to light you on fire, your dead body on fire with a boat of your stuff. We're going to bury you. We're not going to light you on fire. We're going to bury you in a pine box six feet under and then we're going to divide up your stuff. Okay. We're not, but your family will. Your heirs will. But I'm just explaining to you that that concept is out there in this world. And it's been out there in this world. I do think that that's what's going on in this passage that God doesn't want them to profit from it because then it could be a conflict of interest. It could be an ulterior motive to just start accusing people of worshiping false gods so that you can go in and, and steal their stuff. So the proper protocol is to destroy it utterly with the edge of the sword, gather all the spoil and just publicly burn it and make sure it doesn't go to anybody. And not only that, break down every building, tear down the buildings and turn the city into a heap of ruin. And then it says in verse 16, she'll never be built again. So nobody's going to benefit from the infrastructure. Nobody's going to benefit from the buildings. It's just everything just gets destroyed and you never build it again. You just don't. It's just not a city anymore. It's just a pile of rubble and it gets totally abandoned. And there shall cleave, not of the cursed thing that I had, that the Lord may turn from the fiercest of his anger and show the mercy and have compassion upon thee and multiply thee as he hath sworn under thy fathers. When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God. So ultimately following these laws, even though these laws are really harsh and they seem really merciless and pitiless and very strict, he says the goal is so that you can turn the Lord away from the fiercest of his anger so that he can show mercy, so that he can have compassion upon thee and multiply thee as he hath sworn on thy fathers. And look, saying that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament is a false doctrine. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. Not only that, God does not change throughout time. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. God never changes. I am the Lord, I change not, he said. God doesn't even experience time the way that we do. God is dwelling outside of time. He knows the end from the beginning. For him, a day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day. He's not experiencing one day at a time like we are. 365 days times a thousand. I mean 365,000 days. Thousand years. To God, that's just like one day. There's no difference because he's not experiencing time the way that we are. And so God doesn't experience time and change and mature and grow. First of all, he's already perfect. So he can't improve because he's already the best. There's no place to go. He is excellent in every way. And so there's no way for him to improve in any of his attributes. So it's not like, well, you know, he's a bit of a hot head in the Old Testament. A little bit angry, but now in the New Testament, he's kind of mellowed out in his old age. He hasn't experienced any passing of time to mellow him out. And even if he did experience billions of years, he's never going to mellow out. He's just not going because he's already perfect. All of his attributes are just maxed out. He's got 99, level 99 in every single attribute. His XP was maxed out, you know, from the beginning. OK, he does not progress or evolve or change or grow. He's God. He doesn't change. He's always the same. And so the same God who wrote Deuteronomy 13 is the same God who wrote John 3 16. Right. And so therefore, we understand that Deuteronomy 13 is not some, well, you know, back then, whatever. Obviously, we realize that we're not under the law. We get it. Nobody's trying to bring you under the law. We're not trying to reinstitute the Old Testament law whatsoever. We would like our modern laws to be as much patterned after God's perfect laws as possible. Obviously, it's a standard that we could look at to get ideas about what appropriate punishments are for appropriate crimes. But at the same time, we are just looking at this tonight, primarily to understand who God is. What is God's attitude toward these sins? What is God's attitude toward false religion? What does he expect our attitude to be? Why would that change? It's not like God just, man, he just hated these false gods in Deuteronomy 13, but he's just looking down, just smiling down on the Hindus, and he's just smiling down on Buddhism and just smiling down on Islam. There's no way. God's fierce anger. Do you see that in verse 17? The fierceness of his anger is real. And so God hates false religion. Nobody's trying to say, hey, we're living in the Old Testament. Hey, let's go kill false prophets. No, no, but here's what we're trying to say. Here's the point of the sermon. Here's what we're trying to understand. God hates false religion. That's undeniable from this passage. God has fierce anger toward false religion, and God expects our attitude to mirror his attitude and for our eye not to pity nor spare, but that we will execute his fierce wrath upon this type of false religion. Obviously, that looks different in the New Testament than in the Old Testament, but the principle hasn't changed, and God's character hasn't changed. So you never convinced me that in the New Testament, God is soft on false religion, or that we should have a soft spot for false religion, or that the principle doesn't apply that if someone is super guilty and they're your family, you don't just give them a pass because they're family. You say, hey, if they're family, well, I don't want anything to do with them if they're a worshiper of Satan, if they're a son of Belial. And so we need to be able to read the Old Testament realizing that even though we're not under the law, it still contains the wisdom of the ages. It still contains information about God's character, and it still contains instruction in righteousness for how to live our lives today. Don't worship false gods. If someone tries to get you to worship false gods, don't consent to them. And although we would not carry out the particulars of kill them, stone them with stones, we would still realize, I need to get this person out of my life, because what was the point of killing them in the Old Testament is like, hey, number one, we don't want to be influenced by these people. And number two, we want other people to see and fear and do no more so wickedly. Well, if we were to ostracize false prophets, sodomites, and other reprobates, well, then other people would fear. It would put the fear of God into people. And so Deuteronomy 13 is part of the Bible. And so we need to take the whole picture. We need to take all the love and grace and mercy from the Bible. But then somewhere in your worldview, Deuteronomy 13 better have a place. And I'm talking the whole chapter, not just, well, you know, I get it. Don't follow a guy because he did a miracle. No, no, no. The whole chapter, every part of this chapter is significant. The part about your brother and your kid and your mom and that part's significant too. What does that mean? The part about the sons of Belial, take the city with the sword, burn this book, all, every single thing in this chapter has meaning for us today. And so that's what I'm doing tonight is just bringing out that meaning. And at the end of the day, don't listen to me, listen to the Bible. If you don't agree with how I'm interpreting this passage, then you know what? You figure it out. But the way I'm interpreting it is consistent with what the rest of the scripture teaches. That's why I'm interpreting that way. As far as I have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and thank you for the new covenant, Lord. And we thank you for the fact that we have the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. But Lord, there are some some super evil reprobates out there, Lord, just as there were in those days, sons of Belial and false prophets and lying devilish people. Lord, help us to get these people out of our lives and Lord help us to preach the truth and get as many people saved as possible and get them out of the clutches of these kinds of people before it's eternally too late. And in Jesus name, we pray. Amen.