8-7-22 Trinity 8

Bible Text: Matthew 7:15-23 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2022 | The wolf disguises himself as a sheep, Jesus says, but there is one thing a wolf can’t disguise, and that’s his voice. Wolves howl. They don’t know how to bleat. The false prophet, the sham teacher, can look the part, can where the right clothes, smile the right smile, earn the right degrees and have the right credentials, but you’ll know him by what he says. A good tree produces good fruit. And a bad tree rotten fruit. And the good fruit of a good prophet, the good fruit of a good teacher, is the pure Word of God, it’s what comes out of his mouth. That’s how you can tell. Not by how nice the building is that he preaches in. Not by the skill of his speaking. Not by his personality. By what comes out of his mouth. Is it God’s Word or not?

Jesus has just been saying that He has come not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. He says, Amen, I say to you not one jot, not one tittle, not a single letter will fall from the Bible till all is fulfilled. And I say to you, whoever teaches one of these little ones to break the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of God. If you want to be a friend of Jesus, if you want Jesus as your friend, you will have to have the Bible as your friend. He loves it. Every word of it. It is, as He says, the witness to Him. When the Jews assault and accuse Him and demand a sign, saying, “You bear witness of yourself; your witness isn’t true,” Jesus responds by telling them that His works bear witness of who He is, and His Father bears witness, and the Bible, it bears witness. “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but these are they which testify of Me.” And finally Jesus ends the greatest sermon He ever preached, that has ever been preached, the sermon from which our Gospel is taken, He ends it by saying, “Whoever listens to my words and keeps them, him I will liken to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it didn’t fall, because it was founded on the Rock.” The good fruit of a true prophet is the Word of Jesus, the word of the Bible.

In the Old Testament, you have two classes of false prophets. You have the obviously false ones, who don’t come to you in sheep’s clothing. They don’t even claim to be prophets of the Lord. They’re prophets of another god. Like the prophets of Baal who cry out to their false god all day and cut themselves in a desperate attempt to get their non-existent god to answer them. There’s no difficulty in recognizing these prophets. They tell you who they are. And we have these false prophets in our day too. They don’t claim to be Christians. They don’t claim to speak Jesus’ words. So they have nothing to say to you about God or religion and that should be obvious to you, because Jesus is your Lord and Master and Savior. We adore Him and can’t hear anything spoken against Him. So the Muslim or the Hindu or the Jew or the atheist, anyone who would teach against Jesus, say He didn’t save us by His blood, say He was only another man, they speak obvious nonsense, totally abhorrent to the Christian heart. Jesus is simply everything. He is our treasure. His face is what we long to see. And His voice has final authority. It is the voice that cried out in agony on the cross. It is the voice that has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. It is the voice that forgives our sins. The voice that calls us children of God and heirs of eternal life. There is no speaking against Him. We won’t stand it for a second. We won’t allow it in our houses. We won’t subject our children to it. Jesus is our Lord.

But there is the other class of false prophets. And this is the class Jesus warns about. In the Old Testament these were the prophets who claimed to be speaking for the Lord, claimed to be speaking God’s Word, but God never sent them. “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.” And it is the characteristic marker of these false prophets to speak what the people want to hear instead of what God actually says. There’s the famous example of King Ahab who asks King Jehoshaphat to join him in a war against Syria. And Jehoshaphat says he’d be happy to do it, but they need to inquire of the Lord first. So Ahab calls four hundred prophets, and they all say the same thing, “Go, fight Syria, the Lord will deliver them into your hand.” One of the prophets even makes horns of iron and says to Ahab, “Thus says the Lord, “With these you shall gore the Syrians until they are destroyed.” So he acts like a true prophet, looks like one, mimics what an Elijah or an Ezekiel would do, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But Jehoshaphat sees through them, they’re clearly pandering to Ahab, so he asks if there isn’t another prophet of the Lord. And Ahab says, “Yes, but I hate him, because he always prophesies bad news for me.” So they call this true prophet anyway, because Jehoshaphat insists on it, a man named Micaiah, and of course Micaiah says, “Don’t go to war, you’re going to get routed, and Ahab, you’re going to die if you go. Go home. Forget about war. That’s what the Lord says.” That’s not what Ahab wanted to hear, so the false prophet with the iron horns punches Micaiah in the face and Ahab has him locked in prison and they go to war anyway.

So the true prophets teach. Not according to what people want to hear, but according to what God says. And we know what God says from the Bible. And the Bible will offend people, just as Micaiah offended Ahab. It will offend us, offend our sinful flesh. It accuses us of evil. I don’t want to be called evil, do you? God pierces to the heart with His Law. He sees all, knows all, “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?” He sees and hears and knows everything. He sees the hatred of the heart, the grudges held; hears the gossip and the bragging; knows the secrets you’ve kept and the shame you’ve hidden. And His Law accuses and warns that those who do these things will perish from His presence forever, to face not only death but God’s wrath against all who practice unrighteousness, on the Jew first and also the Greek.

Now when I say this to you, you don’t come up here and punch me in the face and throw me in prison, like they did to Micaiah. And there’s two reasons for this. First, because you’d get arrested. Second, because you’re Christians and you actually expect to hear God’s Word, even when that word accuses you. Because nothing Jesus speaks to you could ever be bad for you. He looks out for your good completely. He has died for you. He lives for you. If His words seem harsh it is only because He is warning you away from what will hurt you. What happened to Ahab? He went to war against Syria. He dressed up like a common soldier to disguise himself. But a stray arrow struck him in between his plates of armor and he bled out and died and the dogs licked up the blood that flowed from down his chariot, just as Micaiah told him. He ignored the Word of God, but that didn’t make it any less true. The false prophets, who told him to go to war, killed him by their lying voice. And Micaiah, whom he hated so much, his word would have saved Ahab. Micaiah was the best friend he refused to have.

It is no different now. God’s Word, all of it, He speaks because He loves you. Sin will ruin you. Sexual sin will destroy your soul and hurt those you love. Gossip will imbitter your heart. Dreaming of vengeance will harden your soul against the very thing you need above everything else in all the world – the forgiveness of sins. You cannot disguise yourself and hide from sin. God knows. And His arrows do not stray. They will hit the target one way or another. But He kills to make alive. He accuses to forgive. He judges to give mercy. He forgives to see thankful children who honor Him and love Him and live for Him.

The false prophets kill souls today, no different than they killed Ahab long ago. Pastors who claim to be Christian use the name of Jesus to defend killing unborn children, or to defend all manner of sexual sin. And they hurt the people who hear them. They claim to be speaking the Lord’s words and instead lead people straight into Syrian arrows with death and misery the only end. People will use the name of our Lord to promote the most horrible things. And this is everywhere. Not just in churches and from pastors. Everywhere, and it’ll sneak into your home through your screens and speakers if you let it. Before and after the overturn of Roe. V. Wade we heard the president of the United States who claims to be a Christian say that God gives women the right to kill their unborn children. God, the author of life, who became an unborn child in the womb of the blessed virgin, God gives the right to end an innocent baby’s life! In Florida, a state attorney shut down Christian churches and then arrested a pastor for preaching Jesus, and in explanation quoted Jesus’ words against the pastor, “love your neighbor as yourself,” as if you could possibly do anything more to love your neighbor than to tell him about Jesus. False prophets are everywhere. “O Lord how sin’s dread works abound, throughout the earth no rest is found.” And Christians, precious souls for whom our Lord Jesus died, Christians fall from faith in the Lord who loves them, because lying wolves bark out what they think they want to hear. Jesus says these false prophets will come before Him saying, “Lord, Lord,” did we not preach in your name? etc. And it is no small encouragement to us that Jesus will say to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Jesus is Lord, Master of the universe. And He is against the lying voices. So pray to Him to save His sheep from the wolves and give us faithful preachers. And He will not deny you any good thing.

And when you read your Bible you will spot the voice of a wolf from a mile away and you will smell the stench of the rotten fruit before the tree even comes into sight. If you taste daily the pure Word of God, the cheap imitation is very easy to recognize. It’s like margarin to a butter lover. Disgusting. And the more you are satisfied by hearing God speak to you in the Bible, the more dissatisfied you will be with anything that strays from that word. What is more beautiful than God’s law, His commandments? Nothing but the God-Man who fulfilled this law and obeyed every commandment of God in our place. What is more beautiful than our Creator taking on human flesh and facing down our enemies and willingly answering for all of our sins by suffering for them on the cross? What is more satisfying than knowing that our Savior has risen, the first fruits from the dead, and that we will join in His resurrection, finally free from all sin and shame and pain forever? What is greater than receiving the body and blood that crushed death and now give eternal life? What is sweeter than the voice of our Lord Jesus that rings on every page of the Bible? A good tree bears good fruit. And to taste that good fruit is like eating from the tree of life. So eat it up. Like Ezekiel ate the scroll and it was like honey in his mouth. Read your Bible at home and make sure I’m preaching it faithfully here. If you smell anything rotten, come show me, and I’ll throw that rotten fruit into the gutter where it belongs. And when you taste the good fruit, smile and rejoice and thank God that He has seen fit to speak to you and to establish you on the solid Rock of Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate. Amen.

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