Our God is Testing Us

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 ESV

“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.”

Now this passage of Scripture is under the Old Covenant laws, so not everything written here is going to apply directly to our lives today. But there are some things taught here which are repeated for us in the New Testament under the New Covenant, and there are things taught here which we can learn from both in what to apply and in what not to apply and in how some of these teachings here are being twisted and misused today to discourage some followers of Christ from following the Lord in obedience.

Some people today who profess faith in Jesus Christ are discounting that God speaks to people via dreams at all, citing such passages as this one. But remember the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost when some of the crowd thought the believers in Jesus were drunk because they were filled with the Holy Spirit? He countered that notion by quoting from Joel 2:

“And in the last days it shall be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

    and your young men shall see visions,

    and your old men shall dream dreams;

even on my male servants and female servants

    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.”

So, the sin is not in having dreams, and the sin is not in believing that God speaks sometimes through dreams to people, but the sin of the dreamers in this passage in Deuteronomy is that they were using their dreams to tell the people, “Let us go after other gods which you have not known and let us serve them.” For Joel’s prophecy and Peter’s words on the day of Pentecost solidify for us that God may indeed speak to some of us through dreams, but the dreams cannot be teaching rebellion against God and against his word.

And a dream doesn’t have to be something you dream about when you are sleeping, but it can be an ambition or a desire or a goal. For we have many false teachers within the gatherings of the church who are sharing with the body of Christ their visions, and their goals, and their ambitions and desires for their “churches,” which are usually, but not always, business goals and business plans and schemes and visions for numerically growing their “churches” (businesses) by marketing them to the world.

So the main thing we need to watch out for here is to pay attention to what pastors of church congregations or any Bible teachers are teaching the people. We should be testing their words against the teachings of the Scriptures, in context, to make certain that what they are teaching is the truth and not lies. For lies are spreading like wildfire within the gatherings of these modern market-driven and flesh-driven “churches” (businesses), because they are of the flesh of man and not of the Spirit of God.

So, we need to really watch out for the lies, especially since so many of them are so cleverly and stealthily being blended right in with the truth to where they are barely recognizable by the unsuspecting who are not testing what they hear to see if it is truth. Misimpressions, which are indirect lies, are one of the big ways in which the lies are being spread today, because they are a lot harder to prove than more direct lies. But many people are leading the church away from God to follow after humans, instead.

Now the Lord allows liars and lies to exist. He allows wolves in sheep’s clothing and charlatans to spread the lies. It is not his will that they do this, but God allows evil to exist. For what does it say here? God was testing his people to know whether they loved the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul. So he allows us to be tested to see whether or not we are going to follow after the lies and the liars or if we are going to stay true to him and follow him and not fall to temptation to wander from him.

For we are to be the people of God who walk (in conduct, in practice) after the Lord our God and who fear him and who keep (obey) his commandments (New Covenant), and who obey his voice speaking to our hearts, and who will serve him and hold fast to him regardless of how we are treated by others, even by family members and friends and neighbors and by others who also profess faith in Jesus Christ. For if you are speaking the truth and exposing the lies, you will have many turn against you and desert you.

Now this was a law under the Old Covenant that they were to put to death those who were false prophets. But a false prophet is not someone who might get something wrong sometimes, or who might misunderstand something. The Lord’s disciples regularly got things wrong and misunderstood what Jesus was saying, and so he had to explain to them what he meant. And the Scriptures teach that we know in part and we prophesy in part, so we don’t know it all yet (1 Corinthians 13:9-10).

So how are false prophets and false teachers described biblically? They are people who willfully and deliberately bring in destructive heresies. And people follow their sensuality. And they exploit you with false words, because of their greed. And they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, and they have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin, and they entice unsteady souls, and they have gone astray, and they are willfully leading the people of God to go after what they know is evil and wicked and against God.

[Matt 7:15-23; Matt 24:11-24; Lu 6:26; John 10:1-15; 2 Co 11:13-15; Php 3:2; 1 Tim 1:3-7; 1 Tim 6:3-10; 2 Peter 2:1-22; 1 John 4:1-6; Jude 1:3-23]

But the law under the Old Covenant that taught them that they had to put that person to death is not repeated for us under the New Covenant. We are taught that we are to run away from them and that we are to expose them and their false teachings, but it is God alone who puts such people to death. Vengeance is God’s, not ours. The church’s responsibility would be to remove such a person from the church and to expose him and his false teachings so that the people will not follow them.

And this is the teaching that we must follow. And included in this is that we need to be people of God who are studying the Scriptures, in context, and who are applying the teachings given to the church, the body of Christ, to our daily lives. And we need to be testing what we hear and read to make certain that what we are hearing and reading is the truth, and then we need to reject the lies and follow the truth and expose the fruitless deeds of darkness for what they are so others do not follow them.

Safe Am I

By Mildred Leightner Dillon

Safe Am I, Safe Am I,

In The Hollow Of His Hand.

Sheltered Over, Sheltered Over

With His Love Forever More.

No Ill Can Harm Me, No Foe Alarm Me;

For He Keeps Both Day And Night.

Safe Am I, Safe Am I

In The Hollow Of His Hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXwzhSyzPU0

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