Today's readings are Deuteronomy 13.1-18 ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Deut.+13.1-18 ) and Matthew 13.1-23 ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Matt.+13.1-23 ).
The Lord your God is one. He is a jealous God, guarding his people against all sorts of evil, not sharing power, authority, or glory with anyone else. On the other hand, we are an unstable people. And there are teachers, popular teachers, in our world today who would try to draw God's people away from him. Some of them even have the audacity to do it claiming the name of Christian. Our reading today in Deuteronomy points to this very situation. What do we do when someone makes prophetic statements, they come to pass, and then claims someone other than the true and living God? We are to reject that person out of hand. What is our proper response even if that false teacher is our friend, neighbor, or family member? Reject him out of hand. Protect God's people from evil. What do we do when someone comes in the name of our Lord and perverts his gospel, making it something about man earning a righteousness before God? Reject him out of hand. Our world is full of people reinventing Christianity, "doing" church a whole new way, looking at the journey and not the destination, looking for a conversation rather than the one who has revealed himself in his inspired word. After having the secret revealed to us, after praying like one person or another, after walking through a forty day exploratory journey in radical Christianity, what are we to do on day 41? Do we go to a shack and look for our heavenly mother? Or is that just another conversation? In a world where everything must change truly we are driven and tossed like the waves of the sea. We are an evil people, unstable in all our ways. But the Lord is one.
Jesus points to our sinful attitudes in Matthew 13.10-17. We have deceived ourselves. Saying we want to know the truth we have closed our eyes tightly, covered our eyes, and plugged our ears. We affirm we want to know the truth and we do everything we can to avoid it. How God mourns when he looks at his people who try to be as far as possible from him while claiming his name.
Thanks be to God, he has sown his Gospel in this world. Look at the parable of the sower, the seed, the soils. Find a place where the Gospel is not planted. Find a place where the Gospel is not active. Find a place where the mighty Word of God doesn't accomplish his purpose. That is the place where the soil and its accessories choke it. And even there it is implanted and grows. Even the birds as they take the seed away from the hard ground spread it to other places. God's word is living and active. He is powerful. He accomplishes his will.
Why do we flee? We are sinners in need of a savior. Sin has blinded us (and we have cooperated) to our need for repentance and forgiveness. Yet our Lord calls us to repent and be forgiven anyway. Let us cling to the true Gospel which our Lord has given us, not the latest fads or fancies. The proof isn't in the results any more than it was in the time of Moses. The proof is in the Lord we claim.
This is one of the reasons I have found it so helpful lately to confess the Apostles' Creed frequently. Remember just what kind of Lord we have.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
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