Bible Text: Matthew 7:15-23 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Jesus says “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Beware of false prophets, Jesus says, because they will tear you apart, rob you of your faith, and do so with a smile on their face, with talk about love and acceptance and science. Beware of false prophets, and in order for you to do that, you obviously have to know the truth and be able to distinguish the truth from the lie. So Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” That’s the standard. That’s how you know the truth. You know Jesus’ voice, His Word, which is the Bible, then you know the truth. That’s again what Jesus says, “If you continue in my Word you will be my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” So it is the job of every Christian to know the voice of your Shepherd by knowing your Bible. And then to make sure that your pastor is preaching it. Some will say, but I’m not a scholar, I can’t read Hebrew or Greek, I don’t know all the history, how can I do this? You don’t need to be a scholar. To whom much is given much will be required, but to whom little is given little is required. Your little catechism is a simple summary of the Bible and it gives you everything you need to know. That’s why we teach the catechism to young and old, it’s not to torture people with memorization, it’s to show the simple truth by clear passages in the Bible. So that every member of the Church, even a ten-year-old child, can tell the difference between the true voice of the true Shepherd who laid down His life for you, and the lie of the ravenous wolf who only wants to kill faith in Jesus. This isn’t only your right as God’s people. It is your duty. Jesus says to you, “Beware of false prophets.” He says to you, “Test the spirits to see whether they are of God.” He says to you, “My sheep hear my voice.” So know your Christian doctrine, know the teaching of the Bible, and if you don’t have the wherewithal or leisure to be studying the Bible all the time, then review your little catechism, the ten commandments, the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and you will be able to do as your Savior commands today for your good, “Beware of false prophets.”
This is for both inside and outside of this church. First, inside this church, Jesus tells you to judge the teaching of your pastor. That is not in the least to be disrespectful to your pastor or to demean his office – God sends pastors and they will have to give an account for the souls entrusted to their care: it is a high office, you respect your pastor. But you are respecting your pastor when you expect from him God’s pure word, because this is the pastor’s office, to give you the truth, not his own opinions, the words of Jesus, not his own words.
The most devastating thing that can happen to the church is not outward persecution. You would think it is, that tyrants literally going in and killing Christians, outlawing our teachings, would be the worst thing for the church. But it hasn’t been. Jesus doesn’t say, “Beware of persecutors.” He says “Beware of false prophets.” Jesus says blessed are you when they persecute you; he doesn’t say blessed are you when you have a false teacher in your midst. Look at history. The Romans persecuted the church, killed its pastors and leading people, outlawed its teachings, and what happened to the church? It grew. In faith, because it saw men and women willing to die rather than give up Christ. And in numbers, because God’s Word does not return to Him void but accomplishes that for which He sent it out. The communists persecuted and still persecute the Church and yet there are hundreds of millions who claim the faith in communist China today. Not Rome, not Islam, not communism, no political movement has ever been able to quash the Christian church. But false teaching within its own ranks devastates the church. That’s why Jesus ends His great Sermon on the Mount with these words, “Beware of false prophets.”
We’ve seen this in America. All of the mainline denominations used to teach that God created the world from nothing, that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, that marriage is between one man and one woman, that abortion is murder, that the Bible is the Word of God without mistake or error, and now whether Lutheran or Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Methodist, the larger synods have all adopted evolution, and said you can get to heaven by following sincerely whatever faith tradition you grew up in, and praised homosexuality and excused abortion and said the Bible contains mistakes. And they have been devastated. They have diminished in faith and in numbers. The wolf did his job. We rightly look in horror at this serial rejection of the Bible, but how did it happen?
You can blame the pastors. You can blame the false prophets, the wolves. They were the ones who learned the false teaching from their seminaries and then introduced it to the people in the pews. And you could excuse the people. They’re sheep, they’re victims, they were taught a lie. And of course it’s the false prophets’ fault and of course Jesus is hardest on the false teachers – as St. James says, let not many of you become teachers, for we will receive the stricter judgment – but the people in the pews can’t play the victim card here. Because Jesus tells the sheep to beware of false prophets. It was their duty to know and believe the voice of Jesus and tell their pastors, “No, you will give us the truth of the Bible or you will get out of that pulpit.” They didn’t, because they didn’t know the voice of their shepherd, they left that up to the “educated” pastors, and it turns out the pastors were just giving them what their itching ears wanted to hear anyway. Because if you don’t love God’s word you’ll love the world’s.
Why does this all matter? Are we just pointing the finger here at other churches and saying, “Shame on you!”? No, it matters because God’s honor and the salvation of people for whom Christ died matter. First, every word of God matters, because it’s God’s word and we are His people and His creation. Second, it matters because when you compromise the Word of God you always end up compromising the Gospel of Christ-crucified for sinners. And this is our salvation. This is our everlasting joy, that we sinners have in Christ a Savior, because of whose suffering and death, we have been delivered from the curse of sin and everlasting condemnation. When sin is no longer sin, there is nothing for Christ to die for. When the Bible is no longer true in everything it teaches, there is nothing in it you can trust.
What happened in other churches can happen here at Mount Hope if you do not obey the voice of your Lord, “Beware of false prophets.” I can make mistakes. I can fail and fall. God’s Word can’t. The Bible can’t. So judge me and any pastor you have or will have in the future, not by personality, whether you like him, not by his ability to speak well, or whether he smiles a lot, those are all nice if a pastor has them, but that’s the outer bark and leaves of the tree. What does Jesus say? By their fruits you will know them. A good tree bears good fruit. And the good fruit of a good pastor are the true words of Jesus that he teaches.
Jesus uses the picture of a tree on purpose. He has in mind the tree of His cross. That is the good tree. And from it come all good fruits, all good teaching about you and about God. There you see all your sin – because that is who you are, a sinner, and on the cross you see it all on the God-Man, Jesus Christ, and washed away in His blood. And from His pierced body pours out the water and the blood to show you that the water of your Baptism washes you clean because God calls you His child there and gives you His name, and the blood that flows out shows you that the blood shed by Jesus is given you in the Lord’s Supper to erase any doubt He shed it for you. Jesus’ cross is the tree of life and its fruits are the Word of God’s complete love for you, God’s decree that since your sin was on Jesus it is not on you, and since Jesus died your death, you will live forever, and since Jesus bore the curse you will have blessing forever.
That is the good fruit of the good tree, and you know you are listening to Christ’s words when you are hearing about Christ’s cross and resurrection. As St. Paul said to the church in Corinth, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
And this makes it easy to judge what is false and what is true also outside of church. You are surrounded by religion. Wherever you go. Surrounded in daily life by a barrage of talk about God. Not just by popular preachers, guys like Joel Osteen, whom you can easily recognize as a false teacher, because he doesn’t preach Jesus crucified for your sins, but instead preaches a worldly gospel that if you do this or do that, then God is going to make you rich. Obviously don’t listen to these men. God says, “Mark those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to what you have learned and avoid them.” But you see this same theology everywhere.
Take the Republican National Convention, which I’m sure most of you listened to at least in part this last week. God was mentioned all over the place. And you would get the impression from listening that God’s main concern is to usher in a golden age of prosperity and riches for the United States of America. That God’s love for us consists in restoring our country to its former glory. You should be able to listen to this and say, That’s not what God promises. That’s not the Kingdom and riches He guarantees to us. You may agree with this or that policy and believe it to be good for America and obviously you pray for your country and pray God to bless it, please do that, but you know that no election will usher in God’s dominion, that there is no real golden age in this sinful world, but the promises of wealth and prosperity that Jesus gives are an eternal and spiritual wealth that you will enjoy long after this great country has fallen.
Because Christ Jesus already reigns as King. His Kingdom is not of this world, but it is in this world, it is here in His Church where He teaches you not to put your trust in princes or in the progress of this world, but in Him and His Word. Your beautiful duty is to keep your eyes locked on the cross of Jesus Christ – the reason you study your catechism and your Bible – because you know the good tree that bears good fruit, you know the fruits that grow for you from Jesus’ cross – what Jesus’ cross has given you, peace with God that this world cannot give, the right to call on your God as Father now and forever, the invitation to live as His children and do good in His name, knowing that He will forgive every sin on the way, as you walk with Jesus to the everlasting life that He has died to win and lives to give you. So confess with Paul and hold your pastors to it, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” And then the words of the Lord Jesus most certainly apply to you: My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And I give them eternal life. And no one will snatch them from my hands. In Jesus’ name. Amen.