Will you kindly turn with me to St.
Matthew's Gospel chapter 7 and the passage that
awaits us in our ongoing study of this
Sermon on the Mount begins with verse 15
and it really goes on until going through
verse 23.
And I would like to read that passage
now even though we may not deal very
fully with the latter half of it.
Watch out for false prophets.
They come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
By their fruit you will recognize them.
Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or
figs from thistles?
Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but
a bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and
a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Thus by their fruit you will recognize them.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord,
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only
he who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your
name and in your name drive out demons
and perform many miracles?
Then I will tell them plainly, I never
knew you.
Away from me, you evildoers.
Wolves in sheep's wool.
The very notion of being on the lookout
for false prophets, as commanded by Jesus here,
runs counter to popular and contemporary view of
things.
A world that has lost the sense of
values which distinguishes sharply between right and wrong,
truth and error, is a world that can
never fully understand this kind of thing.
In a pluralistic society such as that in
which we live, it is doubly unpalatable.
One person's view is deemed to be quite
as good and as valuable as another's.
And the attitude that we are encouraged to
cultivate is one of a tolerant syncretism.
Let everybody have his say and you add
your insights into the pool and we'll just
go on like that together.
We must agree to a kind of hodgepodge
of everybody's views and take them as our
guide in life.
That's the way of the world.
What conceivable reason could there be, we are
asked, for taking the apparently arrogant stance of
saying that one view is to be preferred
to all other possible views, yesterday, today or
tomorrow.
And I've no doubt there will be some
hearts re-echoing that question in our service
this morning.
There is, however, one valid reason for so
doing, and only one.
That is, that the Almighty Creator, God of
the universe, our Redeemer God, has spoken, and
has given us the means whereby we should
judge between what He calls truth and what
He calls error, between what He calls right
and what He calls wrong, and has not
only indicated mildly that we should do so,
but commanded us so to do.
And that is adequate reason for the child
of God, humbly, we must underline that because
we are all prone to arrogance, humbly, nevertheless
diligently and honestly be on the lookout for
false prophets in an evil day.
And that, of course, is the burden of
our Lord here.
God has spoken, and because God has spoken,
His Son tells us on the basis of
what God has said, look out for prophets
who speak in His name, but not His
word.
Now the first thing I would like us
to consider is the fact that Jesus alerts
us here to the peril and to the
deception of those whom He designates false prophets.
It's all there in verse 15.
Watch out for false prophets.
They come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ferocious wolves, or as the
King James has it, ravenous wolves.
Now though we are warned in the very
opening verse of this same chapter, now remember
this, we must see things in balance and
in perspective, we are warned in the very
opening verse of this chapter not to assume
a judgmental attitude, as if we individually were
the sure and infallible judges of our fellows
in all things.
We're warned against that.
Nevertheless, the same Lord, the same Son of
God, the same teacher divinely endowed for His
mission on earth, the same Lord utters these
words, and we must hold both truths in
tension and in balance.
Watch out for false prophets.
Remember, you may make a mistake, and if
I may now go to the very end
of what I want to say this morning,
Jesus will tell us, you shall know them
by their fruits.
And that means, you see, that we must
not come to hasty conclusions.
A tree doesn't bear fruit immediately.
What appears immediately may not be what will
be there by and by.
We must wait for the time of fruit
before we can really say, this is so.
But watch out for false prophets, we must.
False prophets.
The very words, I'm sure, will jar upon
the liberally minded.
Biblically speaking, a prophet, not a false prophet
now, but a prophet, is the mouthpiece of
God, authorized by Him and given His message,
God's message, to declare to men.
God has called him, God has commissioned him,
and God has capacitated him to begin and
will continue to capacitate him to finish the
work that is given to him.
The prophet is God's ambassador in a foreign
land.
He brings the word of his king and
of his government into a new era, into
a new situation, and he declares it, not
as his own, but as the word of
the God who commissioned him.
That is basically the prophet.
Now, false prophets are those whom God has
not called to do this, but they go
anyway.
And they take it upon themselves to be
declaring the word of God, though they do
not do that.
They say it is the word of God,
but as Jeremiah says, they do not give
the word of God, they speak out of
their own hearts and out of their own
minds.
Though they say, thus saith the Lord.
They have assumed the role, and that without
the necessary divine authorization, Jeremiah 14, 15.
What they say is, let me repeat, out
of their own mind, rather than out of
the mouth of the Lord.
To quote Deuteronomy 18, 22, they have spoken
presumptuously.
And they do that in many ways.
Sometimes, to quote from Ezekiel 22, 28, quite
washing the evil deeds of men and saying,
what you do does not really matter in
the sight of the Lord.
Or in the words of Jeremiah, they speak,
peace, peace, when there is no peace.
When God is at war, when God is
angry, they say, peace, peace.
They are a very dangerous species, false prophets.
They are a dangerous species in any society,
whether it be ancient or modern.
And it is no wonder that Jesus forewarns
us of their existence and of the devastation
they can wreak, especially in a society such
as ours.
To quote just one other passage from our
Lord, in which he deals with the same
subject, writing in chapter 13, verses 22 and
23, Mark says, quoting Jesus, false Christs and
false prophets will appear and will perform signs
and miracles to deceive the elect, if that
were possible.
So be on your guard.
I have told you everything ahead of time.
Jesus had forewarned his people as he has
forewarned us.
Neither is Jesus the only one to speak
about this unpalatable subject in the New Testament.
Paul likewise forewarned the Ephesian elders that farewelled
him at Miletus of old.
You remember, you have the record in Acts
chapter 20, verses 29, following, I know, says
Paul, that after I leave, savage wolves will
come in among you and will not spare
the flock.
Even from your own number, men will arise
and distort the truth in order to draw
away disciples after them.
So be on your guard.
It's the same warning, be on your guard.
Peter and Jude also deal with the subject.
Peter enlarges upon it in his second epistle,
chapter 2.
Jude doesn't use many words, but what he
says is equally pungent and equally relevant.
Whilst in the first epistle of John, they
are there in mind too.
One contemporary commentator sums all that up in
this way.
He says, we hear of them, that is,
false prophets, in nearly every New Testament letter.
They are called pseudo-prophets, as here in
this text, that's how it goes in the
Greek, pseudo-prophets, prophets, presumably, he says, because
they claimed divine inspiration.
Or pseudo-apostles, 2 Corinthians 11, 13, because
they claimed apostolic authority.
Or pseudo-teachers, 2 Peter 2, 1.
Or even pseudo-Christs, because they made messianic
pretensions, or denied that Jesus was the Christ,
come in the flesh.
But each was a pseudo.
And the Greek word underlying our English pseudo,
which is pseudo, means a lie.
The Bible couldn't be clearer.
They are liars.
They pretend what is not true.
They've neither been called of God, commissioned by
God, nor have they been given their words
and their message by God.
They've dreamt it all up.
And they've taken it upon themselves to say,
and to do, and to go, as they
will.
Their perilous deception is also envisaged here.
You see, false prophets, really, are the most
dangerous people in any society.
Now, you might question that.
You do so, and think about it again.
Thugs, drunkards, wife-beaters, and child abusers, we
hear so much of them today.
Thieves and murderers and others are a scourge
wherever they appear, of course.
And we do not mean to minimize the
significance of their evil influence and action.
They, however, generally attack the physical, the temporal,
and the material.
And though that is not a trivial matter,
and that is not unimportant, false prophets attack
the souls of men.
And they trade in the souls of men,
the immortal souls of men.
And for that reason, they are the most
dangerous people in any society.
Hence their devastating menace.
Now, in summoning us to be on the
lookout for false prophets, Jesus underscores two things
of note, namely, the duplicity of their visible
approach and the ferocity of their actual and
invisible intention.
Let's look at these two briefly.
First of all, their duplicity.
They come to you, says Jesus, in sheep's
clothing.
Not only do they deliberately disguise their true
nature and intention, but they express their hypocrisy
by appearing in the garb of a harmless,
friendly sheep.
The metaphor, of course, in all probability, is
meant to indicate that they come as one
of the sheep of the good shepherd's fold.
In other words, as believers, as Christians, as
men who believe what you believe, as one
of us who belong to the Lord.
They come dressed up in all the paraphernalia
of a Christian.
They'll have the jargon.
They'll speak as if they belonged.
They'll appear in all things it would seem
as if they were sheep under his care.
And it is very likely that unless you
are on your guard, you'll not only receive
them, but you'll be deceived by them.
There is not one of us who is
beyond being deceived by false prophets.
You see, real danger, ultimate danger, to the
Church has rarely come from the Church's avowed
and open enemies.
Now, we need a lecture on Church history
here, and I believe that it would validate
this dogmatic statement that I'm making.
The real danger has not really come from
the open enemies, your Nero's, your Hitler's, your
Stalin's, your Mao Zedong's, and whatever.
The real, the real terror, the real danger
to the Church has not come from the
open foe at any time.
True saints of God, with the Bible in
their hand, have been aware that they are
to be persecuted, for righteousness' sake.
And when this has come, they've received it
generally in the name of Jesus.
Sometimes there's been a great purging of the
Church, and those who simply professed faith without
any real anchorage in Christ, well, they were
shown not to be what they were.
But the Church was purged, and the blood
of the martyrs became the seed of a
new-born community of believers.
That's how the Church has grown.
It happened of old, it happened in the
early centuries of the Church, it happened in
the Protestant Reformation, it has happened after the
Second World War.
Any of you who know anything about the
state of the Church in Germany, post-war,
that is, will know how the Church came
to new life there, in very large measure.
And the reason was, they were purged.
Many went under and showed that they were
only believers with the head.
But the Church per se, the Church as
such, came through the fires, as the Word
of God promises us.
No, the real danger to the Church and
to the individual Christian alike, comes from an
enemy, garbed in sheep's wool, who can get
so close to us that we really think
he's one of us.
And we so listen to him that we
think he's authoritative, and he so ingratiates himself
upon us that we think of him as
a friend.
And somehow or other we have missed the
capacity to discern beyond the superficial.
And again the history of the Church would,
I'm absolutely certain, prove that to be true.
I have no time to go after illustrations
now.
Their duplicity!
But then our Lord also refers to their
ferocity.
Inwardly they are ferocious wolves, or you wouldn't
think it, they're coming as sheep.
Many of you who've worked among sheep know
how they can come alongside of you and
brush along your leg and play with you
as it were.
They're so friendly and whatnot.
And you think, oh, this is a dear
little sheep, wants a little company, a little
petting.
And you may be tempted to give that,
make it a plaything.
But inwardly, says Jesus, whose eyes are as
a flame of fire, inwardly these are ferocious
wolves.
Would you believe it that there are ferocious
wolves masquerading as sheep in the Church of
today, speaking now of the Church at large?
Externally they're so much like real Christians, a
sheepskin, you see, and sheep's wool may take
some considerable time to wear thin so that
you can see through it.
But sooner or later it has to come.
The maliciousness in their heart is probably basically
against God and only against you because you
are on the side of God and His
Christ and His Word.
The natural man and the natural mind is
enmity against God.
Paul says that.
Well, that's what we've got here.
Only the application is a particular one.
The false prophet has a malicious, vicious heart.
But the viciousness is against God primarily and
against you insofar as you take God seriously
and His Word and His Son and His
Spirit and His Church and His will.
If you're not taking God seriously, well then,
of course, even the wolf may not take
much time to trouble you.
Our Lord bids us walk that very narrow,
tight rope.
I've already referred to it.
Judge not that ye be not judged, for
with what measure ye judge it shall be
judged to you again.
Be careful what you do because you must
be prepared to be judged in exactly the
same way yourselves, says Jesus.
Nevertheless, you must walk this tight rope, difficult
as it is.
There are false prophets abroad.
Be on the lookout for them.
For your own soul's sake, for your children's
sake, for today's sake and tomorrow's sake, for
the church's sake, for the world's sake, for
God's glory, be on the lookout for them.
You're no friend of God by pretending a
friendship with false prophets.
That is not a sign of holiness.
It is a sign of the opposite.
And the second main thing I want to
bring out this morning is this important complementary
truth.
Jesus announces a method for the recognition of
such false and ferocious wolves.
I'm glad of this.
I tell you, it does not give one
joy to speak about false prophets.
Because you see there is a lot that
is false in one's own heart.
Before God there is not one of us
who can say there is nothing that is
false in my life.
One discovers something all the time.
Don't you?
I do.
And therefore it is a very difficult thing,
honestly, biblically, with biblical balance and equipoise, to
proclaim what the word says in this respect
and to act on it.
But I am glad of this.
Simply to alert us to the existence of
such evil-intentioned enemies masquerading like sheep among
us, like angels of light, as their evil
master before them, that announcement in and of
itself would have been enough to strike terror
in the heart of the early church and
in our hearts too.
But Jesus adds.
He tells us how to recognize them.
He makes it unnecessary for us to be
thus downhearted on account of it.
And he tells us how to penetrate the
outer garb and see into the inner life.
And how to recognize the one from the
other and separate them.
Let's look at what he says.
Can I remind you that scripture generally would
add a lot about this?
I read this morning from Jeremiah.
There is much about false prophets in chapter
23 and in other places in Jeremiah.
So is there a way back in Deuteronomy
chapters 13 and 18 and again in the
book of Ezekiel.
You see this is not a new phenomenon.
From the very beginning there have been false
prophets and Peter in his second letter when
he introduces the subject he says there were
false prophets among the people, that is the
people of Israel.
So also will there be among you.
The phenomenon has been there all along the
years says the New Testament.
But now what does Jesus tell us?
Here in concluding or drawing his sermon on
the mount towards a conclusion.
He gives us two indications as to the
way to recognize such people.
The one by a clear inference from the
immediate context and the other by his reference
to two trees.
Now the first, the clue from the context.
Once again I find myself asking you good
people to notice the text in its context.
When I am gone this is one of
the things you will be glad to perhaps
not to hear so often as you've been
hearing it from me.
But we've got to look at this text
in its context and if you see it
in its clear context you will see that
it lights up.
Failure to see it clearly is to miss
a crucial clue to the identity and devastating
ministry of the prophets concerned.
Jesus has just followed his general teaching about
asking, seeking and knocking.
That is about certain methods of prayer.
With the specific and very urgent teaching about
the two gates, the two ways, the two
destinies.
We were with it last time.
Here it is.
Enter, he says, through the narrow gate.
For wide is the gate and broad is
the way that leads to destruction.
And many enter through it, but small is
the gate and narrow the road that leads
to life and only a few find it.
Now notice, no sooner are those words out
of his mouth, only a few find it,
he says, watch out for false prophets.
I believe that's a key.
There's the gate, awaiting your coming, awaiting your
discovery, those of you who are seeking the
way to God and the way of life.
There's the gate, it's small, it's narrow, only
a few find it.
Why?
One reason, not the only reason, but one
very important reason is this.
There are so many false prophets around who
tell you it isn't there.
That the way to God is found elsewhere.
That the route to heaven is to be
begun elsewhere.
You're on it already.
Or you go this way, or you go
that way.
But not here.
Not the narrow gate of which Jesus spoke
that separates you from friends and sundry and
requires you to be with people all moving
in the same direction.
All behaving generally in the same way and
getting away from the vast teeming multitudes.
That's not the way, says the false prophet,
come with us.
What does this say about false prophets?
It says this, that even though they themselves
may be champions of a narrow exclusive mode
of living on the wide road, that's what
I mean, on the wide road they're taking.
Let me explain how many of the cults
live very narrowly, very disciplined lives.
Deny this and deny that.
They don't want this, they don't want that.
They give up this, they give up that
and they have a groove on the broad
road to destruction.
It's a narrow, narrow, narrow groove.
But that's not what Jesus referred to as
the narrow way.
Though this is narrow and exclusive, as it
is with Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and with
some of the older religions such as the
Muslim, only to mention illustrations.
They're all to be distinguished from the narrow
road to which Jesus pointed.
Jesus' narrow way is going in the opposite
direction.
These narrow, narrow routes on the wide road
are going all to destruction.
False prophets may well have their own exclusiveness
then, but their narrow groove, their narrow way
is to be distinguished from Jesus' narrow way.
You see, what is characteristic of Jesus' narrow
way is this, you separate from those who
influence you to sin, from the world outside
of you and the world within you which
we call the flesh, and from the devil
who is the author of temptation and of
sin, you separate from all and sundry every
conceivable thing that binds you to him or
to it, in order to give yourself to
one King, Jesus.
You enter the gate alone to be solely
his.
And you go down with penitence and remorse
for your iniquity and transgressions, and you mourn
for your sins against him and the God
he represents, and you begin to walk with
him and his people.
That's his narrow way.
False prophets divert you from that narrow way.
I never take pride in saying this, but
lest somebody thinks that I'm talking through my
hat, do you know that the minister of
the church where I worship, I can't call
it worship really, but where I went when
I went to church as a young man,
when I told him that the grace of
God had wrought a work in my heart,
he said to me, that's the most terrifying
thing I've ever heard.
It's the greatest insult to your people.
Don't you know, he says, that your great
-grandfather founded these twelve churches in such and
such a place?
Don't you know that somebody else before you
did this, that and the other?
Don't you know that your father and mother
are people of character?
And they count in this place, and here
you say that you've been born again.
Boy, he says, you're not thinking straight.
And I was only a week old, and
I remember looking up at him and saying,
you confuse me, sir, but Jesus did say
that you must be born again, or you
do not enter the kingdom of God.
And I've committed myself to trust him.
I met a false prophet, very sweet, very
kind to the family, very scholarly, and much
else.
And I've known them, some of them, throughout
my life.
The conclusion, the second thing, and the last
thing this morning, that's the first way, that's
the first clue to recognizing them.
They'll dissuade you from going through the narrow,
wicked gate and walking alone with Jesus under
his kingship.
Keep away from them.
Keep them away from you.
The second is this.
The conclusion to be drawn from their fruit,
by their fruit, you will recognize them.
Now, Jesus, now you notice, changes the metaphor,
so that the false prophet becomes now a
bad tree bearing bad fruit.
But don't forget, he's talking about the same
species.
He's talking about the false prophet still.
He's now under the metaphor of a bad
tree bearing bad fruit.
Now, why that change?
Why did Jesus change that metaphor?
Well, I've puzzled over this, and I've come
across a little statement from one of our
contemporary writers who puts it like this, and
I'm sure he's right.
In so doing, Jesus moved from the risk
of non-recognition to the means of recognition,
and that's a general statement.
Although you may sometimes mistake a wolf for
a sheep, he seems to say, you cannot
make the same mistake with a tree.
No tree can hide its identity for long.
Sooner or later it betrays itself by its
fruit.
A wolf may disguise itself.
A tree cannot.
Noxious weeds like thorns and thistles simply cannot
produce edible fruit like grapes and figs.
Not only is the character of the fruit
determined by the tree, a fig tree bearing
figs and vine grapes, but its condition too.
Every sound tree bears good fruit, but the
bad tree bears evil fruit.
Can you see it?
Why did Jesus change the metaphor?
For this reason.
He says, sooner or later, you see, your
false prophet masquerading as a wolf, he's going
to bear fruit of some kind that will
prove his identity.
Just wait.
Just give him time.
Jesus knew full well, of course, as did
everyone around him, that the buckthorn grew little
black berries that might at some stage and
by some people be mistaken for grapes.
I guess some of you theologues may be
remembering that.
And that there was also a brand of
thistles whose flower viewed from a distance at
any rate might be mistaken for a fig.
But listen, no one would confuse the buckthorn
and the grape once they tried to make
wine out of them.
You can make no wine out of the
buckthorn, only of the grape.
And no one would confuse thistles from its
accompanying fruit here.
No one would eat thistle flower for supper
thinking he was eating figs.
Of course you wouldn't.
And that's what Jesus is saying.
Just let them grow.
Just give them time.
Just be patient.
Just wait upon God.
Arm yourself.
Be ready.
Don't let him influence you.
Don't let her influence you.
Sooner or later the fruit will be manifested.
What then is the good fruit which a
good prophet grows and which a false prophet
simply lacks?
I'll be very brief, though conscious that I'm
not doing justice to the question.
To the first hearers and to present day
readers of the Sermon on the Mount, the
answer is simple and straightforward.
The fruit that makes a true prophet of
God lies first in character, then in conduct.
And underlying both character and conduct are his
beliefs.
The true prophet believes what the supreme prophet
has said.
And the supreme prophet of God was the
incarnate Son of God, born of the Virgin,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and
buried and rose again and is ascended.
What the supreme prophet, the prophet of Scripture
of old, the one likened to Moses, what
he has said, the minor prophets, if I
may so speak, the rest of the prophets,
accept, believe and act upon.
The true prophets believe that.
If it be asked what the distinctive marks
of such character and conduct are, we would
first stress that they are modeled according to
the teaching of the Beatitudes and the ensuing
parts of this Sermon on the Mount, dealing
with the practical ingredients of how to promote
a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes
and the Pharisees.
Read this sermon and you'll be able to
note the character and the conduct of a
true prophet.
Whatever inspiration a man or a woman may
claim, unless he has these characteristics and this
kind of character, he's out of alignment with
God.
That, of course, is amplified by Jesus' teaching
generally, but it is never modified.
It may be qualified and he will show
more and more what is involved in Christian
character, but he will never say less.
But there is one thing, two things, very
significant here.
Two significant factors that will emerge are these.
The fruit that validates the claim to be
a true mouthpiece or prophet of God will
not be based simply on the fact that
we call him Lord.
Jesus said, look, he says, there are many
people who call me Lord, and I will
have to turn to them at the last
day and say, I don't know you.
Now, of course, Jesus knows everybody in his
divine omniscience.
What he means is this, there is no
intimacy, there has been no communion, there has
been no real relationship between us, whereby I
have communicated my word and my spirit and
my life and my mind to you.
None of it, I don't know you, you're
mischievous, get away from me.
But we called you Lord.
Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name.
Here they are.
And they think that they are prophets because
they called him by the right name.
But they've never known the right spirit of
a saint nor of a prophet.
And the other thing is this, of course,
it goes along with that.
The fruit that validates the claim to be
a true mouthpiece or a prophet of God
will not be based on simply calling him
Lord, necessary though that is according to Romans
10, 9, nor upon alleged participation in experiences
of a supernatural dimension.
Did we not cast out demons in your
name?
And did we not prophesy in your name?
Were we not able to do marvelous things,
miraculous things?
All in your name.
And people know what we've done.
Says Jesus, that's not enough.
Oh brothers and sisters, don't let's be hoodwinked.
Men and women can do supernatural things today
and even use the name of Jesus without
having in their hearts the spirit of Jesus
and without knowing him.
Whom to know is life eternal.
I conclude then, where does Jesus put the
stress?
Everyone, he says, and I'm anticipating the last
sermon in the series, everyone who hears these
words of mine and puts them into practice
is like a wise man who builds his
house upon a rock.
That's true for the believer, the subject of
the kingdom, and it's true likewise for the
prophet of God.
He builds on the rock of the word
of God.
He obeys the word that he has heard.
He lives by it.
He dies by it.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus bids us be on
the lookout.
Let us not confine the exercise, however, to
a negative kind of heresy hunting which can
be devastating to our own spirits.
I suggest to you that perhaps the best
way is to cultivate a spiritual climate in
our homes, where we work, in our churches,
that in the spiritual climate, well taught and
disciplined in the word, our children and our
friends and those we teach in Sunday school
class or anywhere else can grow up into
mature men and women that will have the
discernment of the spirit.
God grant it.
God grant it because you see the glory
of God is at stake.
Those who trade in the souls of men
dishonor him.
He would not have any to perish and
therefore he is not willing that false prophets
should stand at the narrow gate and point
people in the wrong direction.
God grant us grace and courage to follow
in his way.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, most high and glorious, we thank
you with all our ransom power for your
holy word, your holy spirit and your holy
presence with us your people here upon earth.
We would learn the lessons of your word
today and we ask that you would grant
us the enabling that must come from you
so to do that we may live by
this word and thus be acceptable in your
sight at last and of glory to your
name as we pilgrimage toward that city that
hath foundations whose builder and maker you alone
are.
In Jesus name.
Amen.