Bible Text: St Matthew 7:15–23 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Beware of false prophets. That’s false teachers. Jesus never says, Beware of robbers or murderers or grizzly bears. He takes it for granted that we’re going to protect our bodies and the bodies of those we love. This is implicit in the fifth commandment – you shall not murder. God wants you to protect innocent life, your own and those around you. If a homicidal maniac breaks into your house, you stop him with force, a gun, or whatever is handy. You protect your bodies. It’s instinctual. It’s God-given. And we need to have the same instinct for our souls. Protect your souls. False prophets are trying to kill them. Every day people lie to you about God. In the media, in classrooms, in movies, in politics. We stand by faith. We have everything, all things, by faith in Christ Jesus, because He has all things, His is the kingdom and the power and the glory, because He is one with the Father, and by our Baptismal faith, we are one with Him. The devil wants to break this connection. This faith. And if he succeeds, he wins more than he could possibly win by an attack on your body. If you die today, you inherit paradise. You have already died with Christ and risen with Him in Baptism, and everything He has is yours. You already have forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Everything good you could possibly experience in this life will never be taken from you by your death, because to have Jesus is to have both heaven and earth and all things. But to lose that faith, to have the devil snatch it away, is to lose everything, because it’s to lose Jesus. And He is everything. So Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” The devil is the wolf, and false teachers are his mouthpiece.
We could talk about the false prophets in the media, in the universities, in the government, in our schools, where you’ll constantly hear false teachings like evolution, that we evolved from slime, and weren’t created by a loving God, and where the promotion of sexual sins like fornication and no-fault divorce and homosexuality is everywhere. Thousands of politicians, thousands of professors and teachers, thousands of reporters are intent on teaching this false religion to you and your children. And they use your tax dollars to do it. These are open attacks on faith in Jesus. And we and our children need to talk about these attacks (our power is the Word, talking about God) and recognize them as attacks on our souls and on our Lord Jesus who is Lord of our lives, and beware of these false prophets. But it’s not this open attack that Jesus is warning against here in our Gospel.
Jesus warns specifically against the attack from within his own church on earth, from false prophets who act like they’re Christians and come to you as sheep but really are snatchers of souls. By their fruits you will know them, Jesus says. By what they teach. Does it match the voice of your shepherd? No matter how often they say Lord, Lord, when talking about Jesus. Do they speak the words of the Bible, do they speak Jesus’ word? And here we have to see it matters which church you go to and which pastors you listen to.
Jesus says to the false prophets, “Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Lawlessness. This is key. False teachers promote sin. They refuse to call evil evil. Listen to what the Lord says about false prophets, “They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you,’ and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” It’s one thing to have some scoffer, some atheist professor, promote free love or no-fault divorce or greed or some other sin. You expect that. But false teachers are in the church. And they defend sin in the name of Jesus, while calling him Lord. And by defending sin, they are taking away from Jesus His great glory, which is to have mercy on sinners who are sorry for their sin and run to Him as the Savior who washes them clean.
What is the second commandment? “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” We think of misusing the name of the Lord as using the holy name of Jesus as a cuss word (which is disgusting) or using “God” as an expletive (and again, no Christian who prays to God and worships Him as the great and awesome Creator and the merciful Redeemer and the Comforter of our souls should ever think about using His holy name as a throwaway exclamation). But by far a worse misuse of God’s name is to use the name of Jesus to promote what Jesus Himself condemns. False prophets convince people, by using Jesus’ name, that they can be good Christians and still live in what the Bible calls open sin. St. Paul says, If you live according to the flesh you will die. They say, live according to the flesh because God made you that way. Let me give you an example of this. I heard a while back on NPR a young man talking about how, when he told his pastor he was gay, his pastor told him that’s great, God accepts him the way he is. Pastors say this. They don’t know how to blush. The Bible condemns homosexuality so clearly that it can’t be mistaken, but the pastor overrides the words of Jesus while calling Jesus Lord. And he leaves the poor kid in his sin instead of showing him the error of his ways and leading him to Jesus who forgives the sins of those who are sorry and want to do better. This happens all the time, with people living together outside marriage, with people holding open grudges and refusing to be reconciled with their fellow Christians. Pastors use Jesus’ name to say, “it shall be well with you,” and “no disaster shall come upon you,” when they should be calling out with John the Baptist, Christ, and all his apostles, “Repent.” You may not continue living in open sin and remain a Christian. This is why Jesus stresses, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s why we cannot be churches who believe uncritically everything a pastor says. Judge by God’s Word, by the Bible, hold your pastor to it, make sure that he preaches it purely, so that he never hears those awful words, “Depart from me, you worker of lawlessness,” but instead hears the beautiful words of his Savior, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Our God is a jealous God. That’s a beautiful word we should learn to use. Jealous means to hold on to what is yours, be protective of it. The wife can be jealous of her husband in a good way, not wanting him going out with other ladies, because he belongs to her, not to them. God is jealous of us. He made us in His own image. He gave us everything we have. The eternal Son of God became one of us, joined our human race, lived our human life, bore our sin, died to buy us back from sin and vanity. He gave us His name in our Baptism. We belong to Him. And He is jealous of us. Our Creator wants us with Him, listening to His voice.
Because He loves us. And He wants to comfort us with the truth. False comfort is useless and embarrassing. St. Paul says as much, “If Christ is not risen then our preaching is empty and your faith is in vain.” He insists that we are most to be pitied if we comfort ourselves with false nonsense. People can try to comfort themselves with false hope, as if God wasn’t serious when He said, “Is not my word like fire and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Or as if Jesus didn’t say, “Be perfect, as my Father in heaven is perfect,” or as if the Psalmist didn’t confess, “The Lord is angry with sinners every day.” Pastors can imagine there’s no hell below us. They can imagine the heaven of everyone’s dream is their inalienable right or that we all go to heaven anyway, no matter the life we’ve lived, but it’s all devoid of certainty, all vain and empty hope, as Jeremiah says, with no foundation. The righteous anger of God against sin can’t be imagined away.
But you who listen to the Word of Jesus know the truth that sets you free. You know a hope that is grounded in reality, in history, in the truth of Christ risen from the dead, after being bruised for your trespasses. You know the guilt of sin, because you’ve experienced it; your conscience has listened to God’s Law and you have heard the prophet say the words to you, “You are the man;” you know the pain of death, that it can’t be explained away by fanciful dreams; you know that you require a Savior who is just as real as the anger of God against sin. And it’s only on this foundation that you can build lasting and certain convictions. Jesus warns not to build a house on the sand. The wind and waves will come and destroy it. Build your house on the solid rock. Build it on Jesus and His every word. And the wind and waves of this world will hit it and molest it, the false teachings, the pains, the sufferings, the doubts, but nothing will knock it down, because it stands on Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh, who was first to break the bonds of death and who will come to judge the living and the dead.
Every silly opinion of this world will fail. Their utopias will fade away like vapor, like a dream in the night. One little word will fell them. And every knee will bow to Jesus. And when my knee bows and when your knees bow, and we call out to Him, Lord, Lord, we will be calling out to the Lord who has been our true Prophet, who has never lied to us or deceived us, whose words are pure life, who was not playing when He baptized us and gave us His own Spirit, who meant it every time he placed His body and His blood in our mouth and united us to Himself in perfect union, who was sincere when He proclaimed by the mouth of our pastors that our sins are forgiven, gone forever, who died for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification, whose words and instruction have been our path and our way through this sinful world, who will in the end invite us into the joy of His Father, the joy He has shared with Him and the Spirit eternally, the joy that He gives us to taste of now in His Supper and that He continues to pray will be ours forever.
He calls false teachers snatchers. But He calls Himself the good shepherd. And He says to his sheep who hear His voice that no one will snatch us from His hand, the same word for snatch. It’s absolutely beautiful. Jesus’ word will never fail you. The snatcher will not snatch you out of his hand. You listen to His Word, you read it every day, you submit to it and strive to live your life by his commandments, you pray daily, and when you fail and you sin you come and hear His Word of forgiveness bought by His own blood, by the life He laid down for you, and receive the body and blood He poured out for you, you do this and you are doing the will of the Father in heaven, the God who is greater than all, you are safe, and you enter in the Kingdom of the heavens into your Father’s presence, and no one will snatch you from His hand. Amen.