Spotting a False Prophet

SERMON: 2008-07-09--sm0856--spotting-a-false-prophet-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:37:55.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates (0 through 7) consist of repetitive, sung devotional phrases, indicating that the material is music (hymn/worship song), not spoken sermon content. The transition from the main sermon to this non-sermon musical material occurred before candidate 0. Since all shown material is non-sermon, I select the final candidate index as required by the instructions. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:35:04.660-00:37:52.940 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, a prophet, as I'm sure you know, by definition, is one who speaks on behalf of another. And all throughout scripture and all throughout history, God has raised up for himself people who serve as his spokespersons. Typically, these are men. Occasionally, they have been women. And their job and their mission is to call God's people, and sometimes the nations of the world, into an obedient lifestyle. Typically, they will point out what it is that God requires from his people. Typically, they will point out where it is that people have veered off the narrow path. And then typically, they will not only call people back to that narrow path, but also show the way in which it is done. Prophets have been critical in the history of God's people to help people to walk on the narrow road that leads to life. That's a true prophet. A false prophet, then, is one who professes to speak for the Lord God when, in fact, he or she does not. In fact, they will be speaking either out of their own spirit, or they will be speaking out of an evil spirit, for just as God has raised up historically prophets to guide his people on the straight and narrow, so Satan, of course, also raises up his spokespersons to lead people away from the true and the living God into that road which is wide and easy, but leads to destruction. And so here, as Jesus begins to sum up his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, he gives us some very practical guidelines as to how to distinguish a true prophet from a false prophet, because God's people historically, of course, have always faced a two-fold possible error. One is to reject those whom God sends to his people, and historically, the Bible is full of examples like that. And the other extreme, then, is to embrace those whom God has not sent, and to be able to keep these apart, Jesus gives us some very practical guidelines. So in the time that we have this morning, let me try to zero in with you on two things that Jesus teaches in this passage that I think will be helpful to help us make that distinction. The first is this. A false prophet can be very hard to spot. Or notice again how Jesus puts it, "Watch out for false prophets, they come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." Two things there that are worth noting, two things that make it very difficult to spot a false prophet. The first is this. They in fact are actually prophets. That is to say, they are inspired by a spirit beyond themselves. And even as prophets sent by God are filled with the Holy Spirit, so false prophets are often filled with an unholy spirit. And practically speaking, what that means is they have an uncanny ability to speak into your life or into your situation. They will often have insights about you or about your situation that people have no ordinary way of knowing. And on top of that then, they have an ability and a power to persuade you. That seems logical and powerful and that is easily yielded to. Second reason is that they of course disguise themselves. Notice again how Jesus talks about, "They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." The devil knows well enough that if he's going to try to lead us away from the true and the living God, he can't come to us as he is because nobody's going to listen to him if he says to you or to me, "Well follow me and I'll send you into the lake of fire." That's really my goal and my agenda, you'd have to be very foolish to follow a pied piper like that. So deception is the power by which he operates. He tries to fool us into thinking that he is somebody better than what he is and that he in fact has our best interests at heart. And if that's his tactic, then that is also the tactic of those who represent him. So the apostle Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, speaking about the false teachers that try to undermine his ministry. He says, "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ and no wonder. For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness, their end will be what they deserve." Very important to understand because as I said a few moments ago, we live in a world where we have voices coming at us from all sides. Voices on how to live, voices on how to be successful, how to be successful financially, how to be successful health-wise, how to be successful relationally. And frankly, the discernment level even of God's people is often astonishingly poor. And I've often said that given a little work and effort, I think I could preach a sermon in your average church that your average listener would applaud as a wonderfully good message that would be heretical at its core. I've never done it and I don't want to do it, but I think I could because so many things can sound so good and be so far off. False Christs and false prophets will appear, said Jesus, and perform signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible. Jesus in this passage would never say watch out for false prophets and give us these kind of warnings if it didn't take a great deal of skill to separate one from the other. Don't ever think that the representatives of Satan are going to look like our stereotypical image of a false prophet. No, they are what? They are wolves in sheep's clothing. We'll talk more about that in a few moments. So they're hard to spot and that's why Jesus then goes on to give us the criteria by which you can in fact spot them and spot them infallibly. You can tell them, says Jesus, by their fruit. 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. By their fruit you will recognize them. Now fruit is the outgrowth, of course, of an internal condition or an internal life. And when it comes to telling a false prophet from a true prophet of God, you and I need to be fruit inspectors. Particularly there are three areas in which we need to inspect the fruit of all those who are trying to teach us how to do life and how to do it successfully. The first is their creed, the second is their character, and the third is their converts. Let me address each of these in turn. A creed is of course what you believe, and then by extension what you teach. Now it's true, some false prophets probably teach things which they do not believe, you know, the snake oil salesman kind of image. But generally speaking I suspect that most people who advocate a certain lifestyle and who profess to speak on behalf of God do so out of relative sincerity of heart, but are themselves deceived. The apostle Paul talks about that, 2 Timothy 3.13, "Evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse deceiving and being deceived." Deceiving and being deceived, it's a vicious cycle isn't it? I am deceived so I deceive you, you're deceived, I get further deceived, and before you know it, we're all down the garden path. We live in a day and age where truth is minimized, in fact people in postmodern society challenge that there is such a thing as ultimate truth. Most people today will say, "Well I'm glad it's true for you, but my truth is something else." So it's all about feeling. Oprah tells the story when she was a little girl sitting in church. The preacher said something about God being a jealous God. And she said to herself, "I don't buy that, I think he loves everybody." And that led her then in the way of opening up to varying kinds of spirituality that are so much part and parcel of the message that she and her program communicate in this day and age, she probably has more influence than most preachers put together. Professors to be a Christian, but has an undercurrent of new age philosophy that over the recent years has become stronger and stronger. How do you tell a false prophet from a true prophet? What do they believe and what do they teach? And the best way to identify falsehood is to compare it with truth. And the truth is that there is a God. He made the whole universe, including you and me, wants us to honor him, obey him and serve him. Truth is that we have fallen into sin. We cannot reconcile ourselves to God by anything that we do. God has graciously given us Jesus, and by embracing Jesus and the message of the cross, our sins are forgiven. We are restored to God and God is making all things near. Now a false prophet can always be identified on the basis of minimizing some aspect of that truth. God loves everybody. We'll never send anybody to hell. We're not really that bad that we need Jesus to die on the cross. God is not really so angry with humanity that we cannot save ourselves. If you want to discern whether a teaching is of God or not, then don't listen to all the spiritual mumbo jumbo that can sound so good and so righteous. Ask yourself always this question, where is the cross of Jesus in the message that is being presented to me? In the message that is being presented, is there an emphasis on the reality of sin, the reality of God's judgment on sin, and the reality of forgiveness and restoration that can only come through the spirit of Jesus? You cut through all the mumbo jumbo, ask yourself where is the biblical Jesus, and nine times out of ten, you'll have no difficulty telling whether the story is anchored in biblical revelation or whether it's anchored in falsehood. The devil doesn't mind people believing in God as long as it's his God, doesn't mind people believing in Jesus as long as it is an other Jesus, and he doesn't mind people receiving a spirit as long as it's not the spirit of the biblical Jesus. There is a huge emphasis today on spirituality because people are tired of materialism, they recognize the limitations of it, but it's put them wide open to teaching from every quarter, most of which has nothing to do with biblical truth. Paul put it this way, "I tell you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." Ask yourself the question, this teaching, this message, this spirit, does it lift up the centrality of Jesus and the message of his cross, does it encourage me to put off the flesh and to put on the Holy Spirit so that I can become more and more like the biblical Jesus, or does it minimize the message of Jesus? If Jesus is not there, central in terms of the cross, be very careful because you're very close then to being led astray from the biblical message, am I making sense so far? You check the teaching, you check their creed, and then you check their character because notice again the emphasis of Jesus, they come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves, what a weird picture, I kind of like that one up there, wolf hiding under a sheep's skin, and a true prophet of God reflects the character of God. And the character of God is a character that doesn't wish that any should perish but all should reach repentance and God is more interested in your and my well-being than he is about his own well-being. And therefore a true prophet of God is willing to speak the truth in love, is willing to call people back to faith in Jesus, is willing to incur the wrath of the masses as historically and biblically they have repeatedly because they are pointing out sin, not because they like to point out sin but because they know sin leads to destruction and they want to lead people back to the true and the living God. And following Jesus who is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, a true prophet of God would rather lay down his or her own life so that God's people may prosper. It's like a parent with a child, you want what's best for your kid even if that means being misunderstood, even if that means they're going to blab to their friends about what a terrible parent you are and all of that sort of thing. Well a false prophet is like the hireling who seeks to benefit from his sheep by taking from them. They are, Jesus says, ferocious wolves. And so in the ferocity they don't look that way but the agenda that underlies their niceness and their kindness is because they're trying to take from you. So they tell you what you want to hear, not because that's good for you but because that gets you on board their side and they can benefit from you whether that be materially or emotionally or physically or psychologically or in whatever other way. They know how to flatter by catering to the flesh. This is very important to understand. They know what it is that the human heart is looking for. They know what to tell you that you want to hear so that you can feel good about walking on the Broadway rather than on the narrow way. Paul puts it this way, they make much of you but for no good purpose they want to shut you out but you may make much of them. And so you're struggling in your marriage. You know the Lord wants you to try to fight this out but a false prophet will come along and he'll say well you know God really wants you to be happy in this other relationship that you're in. You really can't deny that and so the narrow road becomes wider and wider and you're struggling with an area of sin in your heart, compulsive behavior, a place where your relationships are injurious to other people and you're struggling to bring yourself under submission to God's authority and a false prophet comes along and he puts his arm around your shoulder and he says well let me show you the broad way. God loves you anyway. You don't need to repent. Just live whatever way you want to live and God bless you. That's why false prophets are popular. They're popular because wide is the gate, broad the road that leads to destruction. They are masquerading, says the apostle Paul, as apostles of Christ and their end will be what their actions deserve. Their character plunders God's people for their own selfish purposes. Not always clearly evident, clearly hidden for a season but will always become evident as time goes on. So you check their creed, you check their character, are they conformed to the character of Jesus and then you inspect their converts because Jesus says in Luke chapter 6 verse 40 that a disciple when he is fully taught will be like his teacher and even as often though not always our children become the best reflection or the worst of who we are. So in the long term our disciples are a reflection of who we are and how we teach them. And a true prophet who truly emphasizes the message of the cross will always produce a people who become increasingly sensitive to sin, whose hearts become increasingly passionate for God, who develop increasingly a passion for other people and a willingness to take up their cross and to follow Jesus because that's what it is to be a disciple. But a false prophet who minimizes the cross and who minimizes the biblical cost of discipleship who tells people what I want to hear inevitably produce a people in the long run who reflect those values, values of self-centeredness, values of following the desires of the flesh as opposed to the spirit of Jesus, values that reflect not a passion and a love for God and for his holiness but for some sense of feel-good society where everybody supposedly loves everybody else but in the long run experience the wages of their own sin. So you look for the creed, you look for the character, you look for the fruit in the life of a convert and then just very quickly you need to understand in that context that this fruit bearing takes time. A lot of times you and I are impatient. We hear a teaching, we listen to a preacher or you know some talk show host for that matter in this day and age because they as much as preachers are the prophets of our time and you know we try to make a judgment almost immediately is this of God or is this not of God and sometimes you can tell right away but remember fruit takes time to develop and so it takes time to listen to what somebody is really saying because their creed will change over the course of time. It takes time to study somebody's character because character formation takes place over a period of time and it takes time to see what the fruit looks like in the long term. The parent who has a hard time with his kid is not in the best position to be judged whether he or she is a good parent but wait until the kid grows up and then you discover did it bear good fruit, did it bear bad fruit and I learned this many years ago. I talked earlier about the reorganized Latter-day Saints that a number of us ran into in my college days and what made it particularly difficult for us that one of the girls in our prayer group had a sister that had bought into it lock, stock and barrel. Besides as I've shared with you before there was something about that movement that was very tempting because they had so many apparent gifts of the spirit that we were looking to experience in our own lives but we couldn't square it biblically and so instead of making a decision in the short term writing it off because well it didn't suit our notions of orthodoxy or embracing it because it seemed to be what we wanted, we decided we'd put it on a shelf and we watched that group and those people for years and years and years and slowly but very perceptibly as the years went by we could see the true seed of that movement begin to develop and the variation from truth that had been a fraction of a degree at the very beginning eventually became so wide and so broad that there was no doubt but that they were not only cultish they were far removed from a biblical message of salvation and we could then decide determinately this is not of God whatever signs and wonders that we see here are false they are either fake or they are deceptive and we want to turn our back on it because we want to follow the true and the living God. I believe never in history has it been more important for God's people to have the discernment that they need to discern between the multitude of voices that are coming at us that are trying to teach us how to live. When all has been said and done Jesus says watch out for false prophets they look like sheep but they are really wolves and learn to test them by their fruit and God has given us his word and he has given us his Holy Spirit to help us to walk in truth because there is coming a day when the great deception will cover all of the earth and even the very elect if that were possible are going to be led astray. Jesus be the center, be my source, be my light, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be the center, be my hope, be my sun, Jesus, be the center, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be the fire in my heart, be the wind in these storms, be the reason that I live, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be my vision, be my path, be my guide, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be my guide, Jesus, Jesus, be my vision, be my guide, be my guide, Jesus. Be the fire in my heart, be the wind in these storms, be the reason that I live, Jesus, Jesus, be the fire in my heart, be the wind in these storms, be the reason that I live, Jesus, Jesus, be the center, be my source, be my light, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:35:04.660; remove through 00:37:55.000] be my source, be my light, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:37:55.000; resume after this marked segment]