Let's turn now in our Bibles to Jeremiah
chapter 23.
Our scripture reading will begin with verse 25,
and I'll read the 25th and the odd
-numbered verses, and Pastor Brian will lead you
in the reading of the even-numbered verses
to the end of the chapter 23 of
the book of Jeremiah.
Shall we stand to read the word of
God?
The Lord is speaking, and he says, I
have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy
lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed,
I have dreamed.
How long shall this be in the heart
of the prophets that prophesy lies?
Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of
their own heart, which think to cause my
people to forget my name by their dreams
which they tell every man to his neighbor,
as their fathers have forgotten my name for
Baal.
The prophet that hath a dream, let him
tell a dream, and he that hath my
word, let him speak my word faithfully.
What is the chap to the weed, saith
the Lord?
Is not my word like a fire, saith
the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh
the rock in pieces?
Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith
the Lord, that steal my words everyone from
his neighbor.
Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the
Lord, that use their tongues and say, He
saith, Behold, I am against them that prophesy
false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell
them and cause my people to err by
their lies and by their lightness.
Yet I sent them not, nor commanded them.
Therefore, they shall not profit this people at
all, saith the Lord.
And when this people or the prophet or
a priest shall ask thee, saying, What is
the burden of the Lord?
Thou shalt then say unto them, What burden?
I will even forsake you, saith the Lord.
And as for the prophet and the priest
and the people that shall say the burden
of the Lord, I will even punish that
man in his house.
Thus shall you say one to his neighbor
and to every one to his brother, What
hath the Lord answered?
And what hath the Lord spoken?
And the burden of the Lord shall you
mention no more.
For every man's word shall be his burden,
for ye have perverted the words of the
living God, of the Lord of hosts our
God.
And thus shalt thou say to the prophet,
What hath the Lord answered?
And what hath the Lord spoken?
But since ye say the burden of the
Lord, therefore thus saith the Lord, because ye
say this word, the burden of the Lord,
and I have sent unto you, saying, Ye
shall not say the burden of the Lord.
Therefore, behold, I am even, I will utterly
forget you, and I will forsake you and
the city that I gave you and your
fathers, and have cast you out of my
presence.
And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon
you and a perpetual shame which shall not
be forgotten.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you that your burden is
easy and is light.
And those that go around professing the heavy
burden of God upon them are really speaking
lies, Lord, in your name.
Help us, Lord, to walk in the joy
of the salvation that you have given.
Help us to walk around, Lord, with lightness
of heart and mind, having been delivered from
the powers of darkness and having been brought
into the kingdom of your Son.
Lord, we do pray that today, as we
talk about false prophets, that you will cause
us, Lord, to be discerning as to the
things that we hear and the things that
we follow, that we might walk, Lord, in
your truth and in the light of your
word, that we would not stumble in darkness.
But know, Lord, your glorious light as it
lightens the path that we walk.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
We'd like to draw your attention this morning
to Jeremiah chapter 27, beginning with verse 12.
Jeremiah says, I spoke also to Zedekiah the
king of Judah these words, Bring your neck
under the yoke of the king of Babylon
and serve him and his people and live.
For why will you die, you and your
people, by the sword and by the famine,
by the pestilence that the Lord has declared
would happen to the nation that will not
serve the king of Babylon?
Therefore do not listen to the words of
the prophets that speak unto you, saying, You
will not serve the king of Babylon, for
they prophesy a lie unto you.
For I have not sent them, saith the
Lord, and yet they prophesy a lie in
my name, that I might drive you out
and that you might perish, you and the
prophets that prophesy unto you.
As we go through the Bible, we will
find that throughout the Bible there are those
continual warnings against men who supposedly are speaking
for God.
Supposedly they are prophets, but God said they
prophesy lies.
I've not spoken unto them and they cause
the people to err because of the lies
that they speak.
But how can you tell if a person
is really a false prophet?
Here are two groups that are speaking to
King Zedekiah.
Jeremiah is telling him, surrender to the Babylonian
army and the city will be spared.
If you try to resist, you're going to
bring famine and pestilence and sword upon the
city and the people are going to be
destroyed.
The city will be destroyed.
You'll be taken as captives to Babylon.
So surrender, make peace with them when they
come.
The false prophets were saying to King Zedekiah,
the Babylonians will never conquer this city.
Resist the troops and fight against them, for
the Lord will give you victory over the
Babylonian army.
So here are contradictory messages coming to the
King from Jeremiah and from the other prophets
who supposedly are speaking to Zedekiah in the
name of the Lord.
One is saying, surrender to Babylon and spare
the city, the complete destruction.
The others are saying the Babylonians will never
enter the city.
One is saying, God is going to punish
you because of the sin of the nation.
The others are saying, God won't punish you.
He's a God of love.
God's going to deliver you from the Babylonian
powers.
God will not punish sin.
And they are comforting the people in their
sin.
You cannot always tell a false prophet by
how he looks.
Now, if their hair is in a pompadour
and they're wearing white Armenian shoes and a
big diamond on their pinky, that might give
you a hint.
But as Jesus said, often they come in
sheep's clothing, though inwardly they are ravening wolves.
The true prophet of God will seek to
feed the flock of God.
The false prophet will seek to fleece the
flock of God.
Peter warned against the false prophets in his
second letter.
He said, but there were false prophets among
the people, even as there shall be false
teachers among you, who privately shall bring in
damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought
them, who bring upon themselves swift destruction.
Many shall follow their pernicious ways as they
speak evil of the way of truth.
And because of their covetousness, they with feigned
words shall seek to make merchandise of you.
That is, they will seek to fleece you
with feigned words.
Anyone who tells you that you should give
because God needs your money is a false
prophet.
You should give because of the privilege of
giving and investing in the work of God's
kingdom.
You should never give with the sense of
getting more back for yourself.
That seed faith concept is the brainchild of
a false prophet.
Anyone who suggests that by your giving, you
have a better chance of receiving healing, or
receiving a miracle, or a better chance of
God answering your prayers, they are a false
prophet.
Anyone who suggests that a person's salvation, one
that you're praying for, could possibly be linked
to your giving, they are false prophets.
Anyone who suggests that you can buy time
out of purgatory for a loved one is
a false prophet.
These should be no-brainers.
Anyone who suggests that God will not punish
evil is a false prophet.
Anyone tells you that there are errors in
the Bible that you can't really trust the
Bible are false prophets.
Anyone who says that they know better than
God is a false prophet.
A few years back when the first Gulf
War was initiated, there was a lot of
talk in the press and so forth concerning
the possibility of Armageddon.
And it became quite an issue at the
time.
And a radio talk show from Los Angeles,
originally in Los Angeles, called and asked if
I would be willing to be on a
call-in talk show in which they were
going to discuss the Bible and Bible prophecy
in the last days.
They had also contacted Greg Laurie, and so
we both agreed that we would be on
telephone to be on this particular talk show
program in Los Angeles.
So the day came for the show and
the program director called and made sure that
we had a good clear connection and tested
voice levels and things of that nature and
said, now just wait in one minute, you
know, you're going to be on the air.
And so we waited and then the show
was introduced and the hostess of the show
and she said, and we have today with
us Pastor Chuck Smith from Calvary Chapel in
Costa Mesa and also Pastor Greg Laurie from
the Harvest Fellowship in Riverside.
And we also have with us today the
head of the religion department for the University
of Southern California.
And that was a curve that was being
thrown at us.
And so she said, we're going to talk
first to the head of the religion department
at University of Southern California.
And so he went on to state that
there were not prophecies at all in the
Bible.
It was a mistake to think that the
Bible ever predicted anything in advance.
It just didn't happen.
It doesn't happen.
That prophecy is just a joke, that it
doesn't exist.
I said, I beg your pardon, sir.
I said, in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah
prophesied that Cyrus would be the name of
the king that would allow the children of
Israel to go free from their captivity in
Babylon.
He called him by name 150 years before
he was born.
Surely that is prophecy, to name a man
before he is ever born.
He said, oh any fool knows there were
two Isaiahs.
One who wrote before the fact and the
other who wrote after the fact.
And the second Isaiah was written after the
fact.
It was written after Cyrus had allowed the
children of Israel to go free from their
captivity.
I said, I beg your pardon, sir.
If you'll go to the New Testament, you'll
find that Jesus spoke of the first part
of Isaiah and attributed it to Isaiah.
He also spoke of the second part of
the book of Isaiah, quoted it and attributed
it to Isaiah the prophet.
He said, well, Jesus didn't have the research
that's available to us today.
I said, well, I beg your pardon, sir.
Are you telling me that you are smarter
than Jesus when it comes to the word
of God?
He said, well, unfortunately, he didn't have all
of the research that's available for us today.
I hung up.
I thought, no way.
The phone rang and the lady said, I'm
the program director and we lost contact with
you.
I said, you sure did.
It wasn't an accident.
It was deliberate.
I said, I really don't know how to
talk to a man who knows more about
the Bible than Jesus.
Unfortunately, Greg didn't know that I hung up
and he hung on for a while, but
any man who says that he knows more
about the Bible than Jesus, it's pretty simple.
He's a false prophet.
There was a difference between the message that
Jeremiah was giving to the king and the
message that the false prophets were giving to
the king.
Jeremiah was saying their whole only hope of
escape from the judgment was to repent and
to change and to turn from their false
gods and to worship the true and the
living God.
The false prophets were assuring them that they
were okay.
They could go on as they were, that
they had nothing to fear, that God would
not bring judgment upon them.
There was a tragic consequence to their listening
to the false prophets because rather than submitting
to the Babylonian army, they sought to resist.
They went through a terrible period of famine
and pestilence within the city.
Finally, the Babylonian army had torn down the
wall, poured into the city, and there was
tremendous bloodshed.
The king himself, Zedekiah, sought to escape by
a secret tunnel but was pursued by the
Babylonian army.
And when they caught up with him, they
mutilated his body and then they took him
as a captive to Babylon.
But by listening to the false prophets, thousands
of innocent lives were destroyed because they chose
to listen to the false prophets rather than
the true prophet of God, Jeremiah.
But they would rather hear the comforting lies
that were being told, that God doesn't really
care that you are serving false gods.
It doesn't really concern him.
You can go on in your evil and
God will smile at it.
And they wanted to hear that.
And thus, in listening to the false prophets,
they were destroyed.
Once the Babylonian army had conquered the city
and there were all of these corpses around
and Zedekiah had his eyes put out.
His sons were killed before him and after
he watched them kill his sons, then they
put out his eyes, gouged them out, and
took him as a captive to Babylon.
It was too late then.
I'm sure that in his mind he thought,
why did I listen to those false prophets?
But it was too late.
You can't reverse the judgment that has already
taken place.
I understand that on 9-11 when the
Twin Towers were destroyed in New York, that
at the beginning as some of the people
were escaping from the building, there were those
that were standing there and they were encouraging
the people to go back into the building.
That it was going to be all right.
They would be safe and to return back
into the building.
And many of the people then returned and
went back into the building.
You say, well what a tragedy.
Who would be so foolish as to tell
them to go back into the building when
they had escaped out of the building?
That person was responsible for the death of
many people.
How could they do that?
But you think of the false prophets.
You see, they are comforting people in their
sin.
And one day God is going to bring
judgment.
Now those that lost their lives by returning
into the building, if they were Christians, if
they were saved, they're with the Lord in
heaven.
But we're talking about eternal destiny.
Not just a temporary loss of life.
But we're talking about lost forever, eternal punishment
upon the wicked.
And if you are listening to a false
prophet and saying, well God is a God
of love.
He's too loving to have ever really punish
people for their sins.
And you're being comforted.
And you think, I can go on and
live in sin.
I can go on in these sinful practices.
That they told me that God is not
going to judge.
That it's going to be all right in
the end.
God is going to be merciful and gracious.
And I can live as I please.
And it doesn't really matter.
They are guilty of giving you false information
that could cost you your eternal destiny.
Whether you are with the Lord or apart
from the Lord.
What a terrible thing it is to give
false assurance to people that cost them their
lives.
How much worse when it costs them their
eternal destiny.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life.
And no man can come to the Father
but by me.
Thus, if a person says, well, all religions
are good.
All roads lead to heaven.
It doesn't really matter what road you take.
You can believe what you wish.
And all roads will ultimately lead to heaven.
They are false prophets.
They are saying something that is totally contradicting
what Jesus said when he said, no man
can come to the Father but by me.
Now there are those that say, well, that's
too narrow.
You can't believe that God is that narrow,
can you?
And they try to assure you that you
can just get to heaven by any old
kind of belief that you might have.
I wonder how many people at death who
are expecting to enter into heaven only to
awake in hell.
At that point, they will realize I listened
to a false prophet who comforted me and
assured me in my sin.
And forever ruling the fact that you didn't
listen to what God said, but to what
man said.
How can I avoid being deceived by a
false prophet?
The best way is to become acquainted personally
with the genuine, with the Word of God.
Begin to study the Bible.
Find out directly what God has to say.
That's been our purpose here at Calvary Chapel,
to encourage people to read the Bible.
That's why we go through the Bible, chapter
by chapter, so that you can read through
the Bible and discover what God has said.
When you become well acquainted with the genuine,
the counterfeit becomes quite obvious.
Know God's Word.
Know what Jesus has said.
And know what the Bible says concerning who
Jesus is.
And you will never be deceived by the
cults and the false prophets who preach another
Jesus, who will try to tell you that
Jesus is Michael, the archangel, or that Jesus
is a half-brother to Lucifer.
Know that God will never say anything that
contradicts what he has already said.
So anyone who tells you something that is
contradictory to the plain teaching of the scriptures
is a false prophet.
The problem is, of course, is that so
many people do not know what the Bible
teaches.
And there are so many people who say,
well, the Bible says, and the Bible didn't
say it.
The Bible says God helps those that help
themselves.
Where?
I've never found that scripture, and I've read
the Bible through several times.
I'll pay you handsomely if you can show
me that in the scriptures.
Whenever someone comes to me, and they have
some strange, weird pitch concerning the Bible, some
weird interpretation of a scripture, I will say,
where in the world did you ever get
that?
And their usual answer is, well, I was
just reading the Bible, and I saw this
scripture.
I said, no, no, no, not so.
You're lying to me.
You could never come to that understanding just
reading that scripture.
Someone told you that that's what it meant.
Because you would never get that by the
plain reading of the scripture.
God hasn't hid his truth, and the Bible
isn't designed to hide the truth of God.
It's designed to reveal the truth of God.
Read the plain word of God, and it
will speak to you.
We encourage you to read the Bible for
yourself.
God said what he meant, and he meant
what he said.
You can read it with that kind of
confidence.
Beware of any new truth.
There are always those that are coming along
with some new revelation that God has given
to them, and it's something that everybody should
know.
And usually their eyes are wide, and you
know, sort of glassy.
But they've got this new concept, and you
know, God has shown it to them, and
now they need to reveal it to the
world, you know.
We don't need new truth.
What we need is new experiences in the
old truths of the word of God.
You see, if I say, well, God's given
me a revelation, it's new.
It's something for this age and generation and
all, and this will help you, you know,
and you need.
It's saying that God hid these wonderful truths
from the early church and from the believers
through the centuries, but now he has used
me as a special instrument, and for so
many bucks, I'll be glad to share you
with you these truths, you know.
The apostle Peter, in his second letter, said,
grace and peace be multiplied unto you through
the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord.
For by his divine power, he has given
to us all things that are necessary to
live a life of godliness through the knowledge
of him who has called us to glory
and virtue.
For he has given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises, that by these we might
be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world through
lust.
Peter's saying God's given us all that we
need.
It's there in the word.
Everything that you need to walk a life
of and to live for the Lord, it's
right here in the word of God for
you.
How can we have fellowship with God and
what is necessary for us to spend eternity
with him in heaven?
It's all right here.
It tells you how you can have fellowship
and it assures you of God's promise to
live with him forever, everlasting life.
It's interesting that when Jesus warned them to
beware of false prophets, he made that warning
in an interesting context.
He was talking to them about two paths
of life.
One is a narrow path.
It is a straight gate that leads to
the narrow path that leads to everlasting life.
He said there are few that find it.
But there is a broad path and there
is a broad way that leads to destruction.
And there are many that are going in
to that broad gate.
Beware, he said, of false prophets.
You see, they stand at the broad gate
and they say, this is the way, this
is the way.
And they're pointing people to the broad way.
Then Jesus went on to say, again in
context, not all who say unto me, Lord,
Lord are going to enter the kingdom of
heaven.
He said, many will come to me in
that day and they will say, Lord, have
we not prophesied in thy name?
And in thy name we've cast out devils.
And in thy name we've done many wonderful
works.
And Jesus said, I will profess to them,
I never knew you.
Depart from me, you that work iniquity.
Many are being deceived today into believing that
God will accept your good works.
God will accept your good intentions, that God
will receive you because you're an American.
The Bible plainly teaches that a person must
be born again in order to enter the
kingdom of heaven.
The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the
only way by which we will ever enter
the kingdom of heaven.
No man, Jesus said, can come to the
father, but by me.
When it is your eternal destiny that is
at stake, you don't want to be mistaken.
You don't want to wake up and find
yourself forever separated from God.
You need to know and you need to
be certain that you're walking on the right
path.
You say, well, you can't know that.
Well, the Bible says you can.
The Bible says, make your calling and election
sure.
Be sure of your eternal destiny.
John said, we know that we have passed
from death unto life and you can know
that and you should know that.
I've talked to many Mormons who said, well,
it's presumptive to say, I know I'm saved.
You won't really know until you die.
I said, oh, help.
That's a horrible time to discover.
Isn't it?
I want to know.
I want to know for sure that I'm
on the right path.
And if I'm following Jesus Christ, if I've
submitted my life to him, I have received
him as my savior.
And as my Lord, I know that he
will lead me and he will bring me
into the presence of God.
And as Jude closes his little book, now
unto him who is able to keep you
from falling and to present you faultless before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
to the only wise God, our savior, be
glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now
and forever.
Amen.
Beware, Jesus said, of false prophets.
They will assure you that you can get
there any old way.
But Jesus said, it's a straight path.
It's a narrow gate that leads to eternal
life.
Father, we thank you that you have not
left us in darkness to grope concerning our
eternal destiny, but we can know, we can
be assured that we are on the right
path because we're following you, the way, the
truth, the life.
Lord, there are so many people throughout the
world that are being deceived, who are trusting
in the lies of the false prophets and
are thus on the path to destruction.
And even as Zedekiah made the mistake and
listened to the false prophets and did not
pay attention to Jeremiah's word that had come
from you, and he suffered the disastrous consequences.
Lord, we pray that you will help us
to listen to what your word has to
say, and that we will surrender and submit
our lives fully to Jesus Christ, trusting in
Him and Him alone for our salvation.
We ask this, Father, in Jesus' name, Amen.