How can we know whom to believe? Politicians from opposite parties take up opposite positions, cherrypicking different data to prove opposite points of view. Preachers interpret the same Scripture texts in sometimes conflicting ways. Even your own Facebook friends come to different conclusions about current events – some think the extreme measures taken to contain the spread of the coronavirus were sensible, while others claim it was all just media hype. Everyone can’t be correct at the same time, so how can we be sure who’s right and who’s wrong?

Deuteronomy 13 eliminates a few popular tests of truth. In verses 6 through 11, we are counseled not to listen to people just because they have a close relationship with us. No, even if our brothers or sisters, our sons our daughters, our husbands or wives were to encourage us to worship other gods, we should not listen to them. Even if our friends who are as close to us as our own souls urge us to do or believe something that is contrary to God’s Word, we should not listen to them.

And the same thing goes for preachers. Even if he’s faithfully proclaimed God’s Word in the past, even if he’s successfully prayed for God to heal someone, if he encourages you to worship any other god, if that preacher teaches you to rebel against God’s Word, you shouldn’t listen to him.

Here’s the bottom line – however important any of our human relationships may be to us, they simply don’t and can’t determine the truth. It doesn’t matter how sincere our friends may be, and it doesn’t matter what good works our pastors may have done. It is only the Word of God that can possibly be the sufficient rule of our faith and practice. We must measure all truth claims, not by our reason, or our tradition or our experience, but only according to the Word of God.

Deuteronomy 13:1-11 (NASB)

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’
3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 “You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
5 “But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.
6 “If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom neither you nor your fathers have known,
7 of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end),
8 you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him.
9 “But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
10 “So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
11 “Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.