True and False Prophets - Matthew 7:15-20

A man named Ebo Noah, a self-proclaimed prophet in

Ghana, was predicting A worldwide flood that was

supposed to happen on Christmas Day of 2025.

He was building several arc like structures he claimed were going

to be people's salvation. They were going to save them

from the wrath of God that was supposed to come on Christmas

Day last year and after the rain never came, he was seen in

$100,000 Mercedes-Benz. Some of the people gave up their

whole life savings in their homes and and thousands of

people travelled many miles to get to this man and to get to

these arcs and when they finally got there, they were unfinished.

One person was so angry that he saw a nearby boat that he

thought was this false prophets and burned.

It turned out not to be his boat and he felt deeply regrettable

about that. Now those of us who hear this

story and know the Bible look at this and we're like, how could

so many people be fooled by this?

We know that God has promised he's never going to flood the

earth again. That's the whole point of the

rainbow, that God said he would never flood the earth again.

Oftentimes Christians though, don't really know their Bibles

and even pastors don't really want to teach Christians the

Bible. They think all all we got to do

is just get them to that point of salvation, right?

If we just give them the basic, very basic understandings of,

of, of the good news that that Jesus came to save you and all

you got to do is pray a prayer after me.

If all that we do is get that to happen, then God will do the

rest of it. And we don't have to do anything

else. We don't have to learn anything

else. We don't have to teach the

people anything else. But as Jesus has been teaching

us in the Sermon on the Mount, he said there's a narrow path

and it's a hard one, and few there be that find it.

And we know that it's not true that a Christian life starts and

stops at salvation. Yes, it starts there, But we can

commit the rest of our lives, as we've heard people confess

today, to go on to live a life that honors God, that that seeks

to obey Him to, to find out all the things that he said and to

worship him through that lifestyle.

There are many warnings from Jesus to his disciples about

dangerous teachers, about the danger of not learning, about

the danger of learning, from those who don't want to actually

teach you the whole counsel of God, but rather they just want

to give you little quips and quotes and cliches to lead your

Christian life. And even Satan uses people to

trip us up, to tempt us and to teach us false things.

He uses false prophets to lead others astray and some to never

come to the true faith. And so today that is what we're

going to be talking about. We're going to be in Matthew

Matthew 7:15–20

Chapter 7, verses 15 through 20. We've been walking through the

Sermon on the Mount and the and Chapter 7 right here where we're

at, Jesus basically drops an atom bomb to close his sermon of

some warnings and some challenges to who's going to be

the true disciples and who are going to be the false ones.

And we'll get to that in the next two weeks.

It's going to take us three weeks to get through this close

that Jesus gives us in the Sermon on the Mount.

But today we're just handling 15 through 20.

And I've got only two points I want to make out of this.

And the first one is this. Be careful who you learn from

the first verse, verse 15. Beware of false prophets who

come to you in sheep's clothing but are inwardly ravenous

wolves. This is a huge statement from

Jesus and there's a lot packed in there.

And so I want to dissect this with you and, and find out what

he means in in the context of this.

And then how does it apply to us?

And but in but first, before we get into what false prophets

are, we should probably understand what a true prophet

is. A prophet of the Bible is

someone who was commissioned by God to speak God's message, to

speak to the people. They often would say, thus saith

the Lord, God told me this, now I need to deliver this message

to you. Now oftentimes we think of a

prophet as someone who just tells the future, someone who's

going to say, oh, this is going to happen in the future.

But actually the majority of what the prophets did in the Old

Testament was deliver a message from God that had nothing to do

with the future. Some of that is mixed in though.

And it's not just a person who tells the future then, it's a

person who teaches God's truth, right.

And so while I, I do not believe there are any more prophets

today like the prophets in the Old Testament, nobody is

receiving new revelations from God to tell the people, you see,

the Bible is closed. It's called the Canon of

Scripture has been decided early on in Christianity.

There's no more books being written.

There's no more people that can say, I have a new message from

the Lord. And then we add it to Scripture.

Know the book that we have, the 66 books of the Bible are the

finished work of God's revelation to humanity.

And now the church's job is to go back into all of this and

read this and learn it and, and live our lives by it.

It is complete. It is a complete work.

It's sufficient for everything we need for life and godliness.

And to back up what I'm saying, I would share in Hebrews 11 New

Testament it says long, long ago, at many times in many ways

God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days

He has spoken to us by His Son. Jesus is the last and final

prophet who is also the Son of God.

He brought the completion of what the Old Testament was

talking about. Now we have the writings of the

apostles who were after Jesus, but what were they doing?

They were looking back at Jesus. The prophets looked forward to

Jesus. The apostles look back to Jesus

and everything that he had to say.

By the way, there are no more apostles anymore either.

I would not trust anyone or any group or any church who claims

to have apostles and prophets. We'll get into some of that a

little bit later in the sermon, but again, in Ephesians 220 it

says the church was built on the foundation of the apostles and

prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

So what is the saying that the foundation of all that we

believe is built on the Old Testament prophets and the New

Testament apostles, with both of them being supported by God the

Son in the Scriptures? And when you build a house,

right, we, we look around, there's a lot of construction

going on in Utah, maybe in your neighborhood, and you watch how

a house is built. It starts with the foundation,

but you don't keep. Once the foundation is built,

you don't keep building a foundation.

You don't just keep going. Cement all the way up with more

rebar right now. You eventually put on the things

that make it the house, the wood and the the interior, the

drywall and the electrical and everything that's entailed, even

the decorations to make the house.

The New Testament church is the building of God's house,

spiritually speaking. There there are no more need for

physical temples because we are the temple.

The Bible says so. But we still in our day have

people who claim to be prophets and have started new offshoot

religions. I'm going to get to that more in

our second point. But today's prophets, although

we can look at guys like Ebo Noah and say that's just

ridiculous if you know your scripture.

Many were fooled. Today's prophets have to even be

even more clever by twisting Scripture and to make them mean

something that they don't or they just leave things out.

The word here for false prophets in our text back in verse 15 is

pseudo prophets. So they're not really the real

thing. You've heard of, you know,

pseudo ephedrine. It's not like the real stuff

right in the cold medicine, it might have some of the same

properties and make you feel a little bit of the same way,

right? Pseudo just means false, false

or fake, phony. That's what these prophets are

and today we can still the Bible uses language that they are

false teachers then. So when we think about this word

prophets in the New Testament, it is someone who is claiming to

proclaim the word of God, much like a preacher stands up and

says this is what God's word says and here's what it means.

And so in the New Testament talks about these prophets,

there will be these false teachers that are trying to come

into the church, right? Second, Peter 22 says, but false

prophets also arose among the people.

Just as there will be false teachers among you who will

secretly bring in destructive heresies, false teachers will

secretly bring in destructive heresies.

Now, if we go back to our verse and look at that, this, the next

part of this, they come to you in sheep's clothing but are

inwardly ravenous wolves. You see, they're pretending to

be like one of us. They might even look like one of

us. They're coming in in secret.

They're not so obvious. They're not so obvious that then

when they walk in the door or when they come into your group

or even when they stand on the stage, that they are in fact,

false teachers. That's the whole point.

That's how Satan works. You see, Satan, as, you know,

contrary to what a lot of us think or believe, he's not

hanging out in cemeteries all day long, you know, or hanging

out at the haunted houses during Halloween alone, right?

He is and has always been trying to twist God's word, trying to

come in and fool God's people. And he does it in sly, sneaky,

crafty ways. And he's, he's gotten pretty

good at it and he's pretty smart.

He's been around for thousands of years.

He's a fallen Angel. And so think about it, wolves in

sheep's clothing. Now sheep's clothing again means

two things. They come to us looking innocent

and harmless and they pretend to be doing everything they're

doing for God, right? That's what sheep are doing,

right? Sheep.

The very image of a sheep is like, wow, nobody's a scared of

a sheep, right? I'm like, you might be scared of

a bull with horns. You're not going to jump the

fence to to go hang out with them.

But a sheep, maybe the ones that have the horns, the goats that

can that that can like really ram you.

Yeah, I've seen some videos about that.

They're pretty strong. But but a sheep is not that

scary looking, right? Very innocent.

But they're claiming to be a part of the pack when really a

wolf describes their true heart motivation.

They're really just there to devour.

Interestingly, when we think about this, we don't, we don't

really think about how easily we could all be fooled.

Doctor Martin Lloyd Jones says this.

The picture we need to have in our minds, therefore, should

rather be this. The false prophet is a man who

comes to us, who at first has the appearance of being

everything that could be desired.

He is nice and pleasing and pleasant.

He appears to be thoroughly Christian and seems to say the

right things. His teaching in general is quite

all right, and he uses many terms that should be used and

employed by a true Christian teacher.

He talks about God. He seems to be saying everything

that a Christian should say. He's obviously in sheep's

clothing, and his way of living seems to correspond.

So you do not suspect that there's anything wrong at all.

There is nothing at once that attracts your attention or

arouses your suspicions. Nothing glaringly wrong.

And as I talked about, you know Satan is good at at disguising

himself, right? It says in in Second Corinthians

11/13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen,

disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an Angel of

light. So it is no surprise if his

servants also disguise themselves as servants of

righteousness. Often times we'll look at

people, a group of people, a religion, and we'll say, man,

these people are really moral or they're really living, you know,

their faith out. And, and we think they must know

God because God is out all about morality and goodness.

And yes, God has a standard for morality, but as we know, he

came to save sinners who can't keep his morality.

But then he empowers us to live it out, but not perfectly.

Again, these are very subtle, say a lot of the right things,

but the problem here is in what he doesn't say.

Will not offend, will not talk about hell, will minimize sin,

won't talk about the commands of Christ other than maybe the

mandate. We should go and make disciples,

right? Minimizes the depravity of man.

Minimizes the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

Minimizes repentance. Never talks about it.

How to repent is the telltale sign of our faith.

Everybody can say that they're a Christian.

In fact, most of our nation probably says they're Christian

in this passage that says you'll know them by their fruit because

it's not just a pray a prayer after me or one day I, you know,

felt an emotional experience. And so therefore that meet must

mean I'm a Christian to prove faith comes through life change.

But the false teacher will never point the people to that because

it seems too harsh. He doesn't want people to

examine their faith. Very watered down.

Sounds like a Ted talk with maybe a couple verses, always

topical and tickling the ears. They don't want to talk about

God's commands or God's call to turn from your sin.

In fact, back in Jeremiah's day in the Old Testament, a prophet

whom nobody liked and nobody wanted to listen to, eventually

they threw him in a pit because the king was sick of hearing him

say thus saith the Lord. There were other prophets in his

day that were saying, Oh no, God's good with everything that

you're doing. And it says this.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly saying peace,

peace when there is no peace, constantly saying there's peace

with God. You've done all that's good and

right, and don't worry about repenting in your sin.

Keep living the way that you're living because God is all about

peace. These are dangerous because they

creep in and invade ministries. When they get you away from the

sound believers and the pastors, they will talk about how it's

actually the pastor who's too harsh or too judgmental.

He's wrong because of his tone or maybe misinterpretation.

And they talk about unity. They want to say the word unity

all the time, saying that other churches believe different

things and and so it's wrong to talk about those.

RC Sproule once said doctrine divides and that's what it's

supposed to do. This is why we have a

confession. This is why we have a statement

of faith. This is why we have distinctive

that we regularly teach and back up through scripture.

We want to be honest about who we are and what we believe

rather than baiting and switching people to get you in

here just to have numbers. This is what you would call

being seeker sensitive, right? Thinking that if I'm just

sensitive to the seekers and don't say anything harsh or

wrong or anything that they wouldn't like, I will get them

in the room. And and when we have a bunch of

seats in the room, that proves how good of a church we are.

I said a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to refer to this this

excerpt by a man named JC Rile. He wrote a book and and part of

it, it's called Jellyfish Christianity.

That's what he calls this that I'm talking about.

And he says, he says this one plague of our age is this

widespread dislike to distinct biblical doctrine.

In the place of it, the idol of the day is kind of a jellyfish.

Christianity. A Christianity without bone or

muscle or sinew, without any distinct teaching about the

atonement, or the work of the Spirit, or justification, or the

way of peace with God. A vague, foggy, misty

Christianity, of which only the watchwords seem to be.

You must be liberal and kind. You must condemn no man's

doctrinal views. You must consider everybody is

right and nobody is wrong. I.

I often run up against this quite a bit because for whatever

reason, the Lord has put a passion in my heart to fight for

doctrine and truth. And I love the church and I love

truth and I love you. And even even if it's going to

be hard to hear, those things are good for you to hear.

In fact, I feel like it would be unloving if I didn't share with

you the things that the Bible says that you need to know.

And because I've experienced it first hand when I was living in

sin, claiming to be a Christian and somebody was willing to say,

hey, look what scripture says, like God, God loves you and he

forgives you, but quit saying you love him back and don't do

anything to show him like you should love this God who has

been so gracious and merciful. And when someone was willing to

have these conversations with me and preachers, preachers willing

to preach. I mean, if I think about the

greatest way in which God has brought about sanctification and

change in my life, it has been preachers not who are giving me

the Ted talks or just generalizing everything or

giving me topical messages all the time.

It was the preachers who walked through the Word of God and it

changed my life and it continues to change my life.

JC Royal continues on this and he says this creedless kind of

religion, we are told, is to give us peace of conscience.

A jellyfish is a pretty and graceful object when it floats

in the sea, contracting and expanding you, You can get it in

your mind, right? Aren't they just some weird

looking but kind of Beautiful Creatures that God made like a

transpellent parent umbrella? Yet the same jellyfish, when

cast on the shore, is a mere helpless lump without capacity

for movement, self-defense or self preservation.

Alas, it is a vivid type of much of the religion of this day, of

which the leading principle is no dogma, no distinct tenants,

no positive doctrine. We have hundreds of jellyfish

clergy, clergymen who seem to have no single bone in their

body of divinity. They have not definite opinions.

They belong to no school or party.

They are so afraid of extreme views that they have no views at

all. We have thousands of jellyfish

sermons preached every year, sermons without an edge or a

point or a corner, smooth as billiard balls, awakening no

Sinner, edifying no St. Never was it so important for

laymen to hold systematic views of truth and for ordained

ministers to enunciate doctrine very clearly and distinctly in

their teaching. When the first the church

started in the 1st century in the book of Acts, you know,

there's these pillars that they started with and it says they,

they had the apostles doctrine, the breaking of bread, the

fellowship and the prayer. And we hold those as like major.

This is why we do church the way we do.

We make sure we have prayer in there.

The breaking of the bread is the communion part, you know, one of

the ordinances along with baptism that we see and, and,

but the apostles doctrine, that's the word of God and

everything that they taught the word of God said we need to

protect this, teach it. In fact, Paul talked about this,

this danger coming, this danger coming when he was in the early

church, when he was getting ready to go basically in Acts

27. He says I didn't shrink from

declaring to you the whole counsel of God, not just jump

around to all the little high points of the things that are

going to make you feel good all the time and never challenge

you. But he says this in Acts 2028.

He says, Pay careful attention to yourselves and all, to all

the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to

care for the Church of God, which He obtained with His own

blood. I know that after my departure,

fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and

from your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to

draw away the disciples after them.

This is a real danger in our church and in our churches, in

the Christian Church in America, and all over the world for all

time. And there is so much talk about

this in Scripture, how can we not talk about it?

Be foolish to just skip this part and pretend like

everybody's right and nobody's wrong.

I was once told that true shepherds are to be watching out

for the sheep. They're to be caring for them,

nurturing them, but protecting as well.

And a Good Shepherd has two voices.

One voice is that tender care for the sheep.

The tender, the speaking love over the kindness, the grace,

the reminding of you can always come back to the Lord.

But there's another voice that he should have.

That's the seriousness of challenge and rebuke and the

warning of the wolves. Imagine being a shepherd.

You're standing out there and wolves are coming.

Shepherds had a club and a staff or a crook one.

The one side of the crook was to to pull, pull them back by the

neck so you can pull them out. And the club was to hit the hit

the wolves, right. So let me give it to you this

way. Imagine your child is in the

street and a car is coming. Which voice are you going to

use? Which voice are you going to

use? Are you going to say, oh, little

Timmy, there's a car coming? You got to get out of there,

man. Like, come on, let's go, you

know? No, you're going to yell, get

out of the road. That's still loving, right?

True teachers warn of the false ones willing to even intimidate

the wolves and train the sheep to watch out for them and defend

themselves as well. That's what I hope I'm doing

today. By the way, false prophets and

teachers are usually self-proclaimed, right?

They just popped out of nowhere. I know all this stuff.

I have a message that's better than everybody else's message.

Real pastors and teachers, shepherds are called by God and

they're affirmed by other men. I know this stuff is kind of

hard, right? Like this isn't all of the diet

that we get from the word of God.

But I'm, I like to go to the gym.

So a gym analogy would be like, you know, we have our favorite

days of working out, right? That's usually chest and biceps,

you know, but don't skip leg day.

You've seen those memes before. Don't skip leg day.

These are that's hard. It's hard and sometimes this

stuff's hard to hear. So I'm going to move into maybe

getting a little more practical about this and talk about how to

discern between true and false teachers.

Let's go to our next. The rest of the verses.

It says you will recognize them by their fruit.

Our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles.

So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree

bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad

fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and

thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by

their fruits. I think about this and Jesus is

kind of just given this analogy. That would have made a lot of

sense to people. Now, I'm not much into

agriculture, but I do live by some fruit trees.

You know, I live up by some orchards in Perry.

And so I see these often. But I'll tell you what, I look

at those and I have no clue what kind of fruits going to come off

of those trees. I don't know if it's pears,

apples, grapes don't grow on trees.

But hey, I don't know a lot about that, right?

But how do you know then what kind of tree it is?

Finally, when it bears the fruit, they're like, oh, that's

an apple. Now some of you guys might be

like, hey, I know, you know, I got a book and you know, like

I'm way into this type of stuff. But for most people it's like,

look, I'll I'll just wait till it bears fruit and then I'll

tell you it's a crabapple tree and it's useless, you know,

anyway, I heard some people use that for stuff.

Use it for stuff, right? They just really kills my lawn.

But but so this is how we test who's true and who's not right.

And actually in the Old Testament, there's a test in the

Bible that is applied when someone claims to be a prophet.

This is in Deuteronomy 18. It says, but the prophet who

presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded

him to speak or speaks in the name of other gods, that same

prophet shall die. Wow.

And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that

the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the

name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or true,

that is a word that the Lord has not spoken, and the prophet has

spoken it presumptuously, and you should not be afraid of him.

Now we have the benefit of the fullness of Scripture when

someone says like this guy that the flood's coming, like we're

like, no, I don't need to believe you, right?

That's just stupid. As I said, there are other

crafty ways and and methods that these false teachers use.

They try to just slip it in there.

But there are false prophets in history.

And let me just tell you, I would be a coward if I didn't

bring this up. I have grown up in Utah my whole

life and been a Christian a lot of those years.

And when I became a pastor, there was a certain group of

pastors that held these conferences that talked about

how to reach people in Utah. And they would say something

that still does not make sense to me at all, that says they

would say, yeah, we agree. You should never talk about

Mormonism from the stage or Joseph Smith from the stage.

Never. And I just, I just, I don't

understand it because if this is where we live and our friends,

family and neighbors are all around us, wouldn't you want to

be taught by someone on how to navigate that, how to, how to

have those conversations to know the truth in the error?

And, and I'm here today to tell you that when, when Jesus said

that there will be false teachers and false prophets, and

Peter said it and Jude said it and Paul said it.

Joseph Smith is one of those false prophets.

And we can test by that Deuteronomy verse.

Did he give a false prophecy? Well, a lot of them were very

general and vague. But let me just say that in one

instance, in September 2223 of 1832, Joseph Smith foretold that

an LDS temple was going to be built in independence.

And it was this huge thing in the DNC, section 884.

He said it was a revelation from Jesus Christ.

He says that in his writings. I'm not going to read all of it

to you because I just feel like it wouldn't be good in our

church. But he says that this church is

going to be built. This temple's going to be built,

and it's going to be like Zion in Missouri.

And all these people after him kept thinking, OK, when's this

temple going to be built? When's this temple going to be

built? 40 years goes by.

People are making excuses. Generations are longer than 40

years. Finally, 100 years goes by.

And they're like, maybe he meant 100 years by a generation, you

know? And then after 140 years,

finally, the Mormon Church itself admitted this was a false

prophecy. No temple was ever built on the

property and it never came true. And Joseph Fielding Smith

finally admitted there was no expectation this prophecy would

ever come to pass. There's a false prophecy right

there. But it it gets worse because we

compare Scripture now to things that were said.

And in second Nephi 2523, it says, For we know that is by

grace we are saved after all we can do.

And there's the little sly thing.

Use similar language, but then add just in the little twist.

After all we can do, That's where it gets wrong.

We know that grace is by faith alone, not after all.

After all we can do suggests that we must earn this grace

after we've tried our hardest. Then God will finally say, you

can have this atonement applied to you.

And that's not what the Bible says.

It angers me, brothers and sisters, it even gets worse.

It says this is him, Joseph Smith, saying that he's better

than Jesus. It says I have more to boast

about of them than any other man had.

I'm the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church

together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole

stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor

Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did

such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away

from him, but the Latter Day Saints never ran away from me.

How dare you say this, that you are better than my Lord?

We need to understand this should break your heart, Church,

that we're in a state that our family, our friends, our people,

our coworkers are being deceived by this.

And sometimes it takes the second voice of the shepherd

lovingly to call people out of the false teaching.

It doesn't just stop with him and that religion though.

But I could go on and on about most, if not all of the Pope's.

They claim to be prophets and get new words from God and they

write it down. And the other cult religions,

Jehovah's Witnesses, even Muhammad and Muhammad and Joseph

Smith have something in common in that their religions were

started by an Angel. They claim an Angel came to them

and said, I have this new revelation.

But we know that Paul says in Galatians 1, he says, but even

if we or an Angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel

contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be

accursed. What fruit did these guys bear

leading people astray? That's the bad fruit, right?

Or it was minimize the work of Christ.

That's bad fruit. Look at me instead, Matthew

2424. Jesus himself says for false

christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs

and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the

elect. He warned us about this and

great signs and wonders, by the way, I mean these guys are going

to be silver tongued, able to wow you with their words, make

you feel some kind of feelings, maybe even possible magic or

miracles. In fact, Revelation 1920 says

about this great false prophet and the beast was captured and

with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs

by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the

beast. They were both thrown into the

lake of the OR the lake of fire. There are churches.

I mean, let me just say this, right?

There's a reason why we try so hard when we're picking our

worship songs not to do anything by Bethel Church.

And I know you guys probably all like some of their songs.

I mean, they do a really good musical job at what they do.

And some of the the words of the entire song, you can't say there

was really anything wrong with it.

But I remember when one guy, MacArthur said when he was asked

about this, like, how is it that these people can say good things

or sing such good songs? And he says, well, broken clocks

are right twice a day. And So what are they trying to

do, though? They're trying to infiltrate, in

a sense, to get us to sing their songs and then eventually fall

into their doctrine. And I've heard several stories

of people who have listened to songs or seen things that

pastors have affirmed. And then they go off listening

to the false teaching of Bethel Church, which, by the way, the

leader claims to be an apostle. And his second in command is

called the Prophet Bill Johnson and Chris Valaton, Charis mania.

You know that. And they're the those ones that

are constantly making miracles like the focus of their church,

just, you know, the playing on people's emotions.

And that seems to be what false teachers like to do.

It's always emotional, right? Even the altar calls in the pray

prayer after me. You won't find that anywhere in

Scripture. By the way, I'm not saying that

I, I have, I've done that in the past, you know, like pray this

prayer after me, repeat after me.

And I was talking to one of the other elders the other day and

remembering a man who I was so proud of that prayed a prayer

after me early on in ministry. And guess what he's doing today?

He's not walking with the Lord. He does not believe and so we we

don't do that because you won't find a place in Scripture that

says make them pray a prayer after you or pray and ask Jesus

into your heart. It's repent and believe.

It's repent and believe. It's a work that God is going to

do in you, and you're going to want to do it without

manipulation. But so many of these

evangelists, they want to be able to say, I have this many

numbers and that many numbers of people come forward and this and

that. And I'm not saying people do get

saved in those types of things. God still uses even the simplest

gospel message to save people, but it's God.

It's not because of the preacher.

So is the the fruit numbers like this is the thing.

And when we're gauging this fruit, the fruit is not numbers.

The fruit is healthy disciples, healthy Christians.

A healthy tree bears good fruit because it's healthy.

That's just what it happens. And so when you sit under good

preaching and the preaching is in the the roots of the word of

God, and he follows his life after Christ, not perfectly, but

you cannot help to start produce fruit even if you don't like

some of the things that he says sometimes.

Course, you probably don't like everything that the Bible says,

but healthy things reproduce healthy things and bad things

produce more bad things. That's what he's saying here.

If a pastor thinks the Bible's boring and has to spice it up,

he should not be a pastor. I'm telling you that because

it's all Christ doing his work, as in as he said in John 15,

five, I'm the vine, you're the branches, whoever abides in me

and I and him he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me you cannot do, you can do nothing.

All we can do is abide in Christ, in his word.

Why do we think we have to dumb this down, water it down or or

take up most of the time with all of my stories?

Because you're just not going to understand what this means.

There's a false fruit you ever seen like like a, a wonderful

little like, you know, table setting or you go to one of

those mega stores to buy like furniture for your bedroom or

your kitchen or whatever and they have fake fruit on the

table and some of it looks real realistic, you know, but if you

took a bite into it, it wouldn't give you anything.

It'll actually taste terrible. That's a lot of what comes from

this hollow false pseudo teaching.

You might get some feelings. You might look at it and think

that it looks real. It looks right, but we've got to

be discerning here. Bad trees or false teachers bear

fake and false unhealthy disciples.

It's like if a tree instead of in Psalm one being planted by

the water and is fruitful. This tree is planted by like a

toxic wage or sludge waste pond. But on the outside, the tree is

still growing and it's bearing fruit.

And you're like, hey, it's still a tree.

Are you going to eat that fruit? I'm not eating that fruit.

This is a warning in love to you guys.

JC Ryle again. Worst of all, we have myriads of

jellyfish worshippers, respectable church going people

who have no distinct and definite views about any point

in theology. They cannot discern things that

differ any more than color blind people can distinguish colors.

They think everybody is right and nobody's wrong.

Everything is true, nothing is false.

All sermons are good, none are bad, every clergyman is sound

and no clergyman is unsound. They are tossed to and fro like

children by every wind of doctrine, often carried away by

any new excitement and sensational movement, ever ready

for new things because they have no firm grasp on the old, and

utterly unable to render a reason for the hope that is in

them. But this is the last verse I

want to look at from Paul when he was teaching a young protege,

Timothy. In fact, these are some of

Paul's last words about how to preach.

He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ

Jesus, who is to judge the living in the dead by his

appearing and by his Kingdom. By the way, the Bible says that

not many of you should become teachers, my brethren, because

teachers will be judged with a greater strictness.

We do this under the fear of the Lord.

It says, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of

season. That means when it's popular or

when it isn't popular, just stay in the Word, reprove, rebuke,

and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

Why do we need so much correction?

Because we are so sinful and this is the way to find healing.

But it's loving. But here's where it goes on.

The challenge is this. For the time is coming when

people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears,

they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit

their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth

and wander off into myths. And here's the issue here.

The people are the problem. In this one.

He's warning Timothy that, look, you're going to be tempted to

change the message because the people want something else and

they're going to go find these teachers and they're going to

get their ears tickled. It's our job as Christians to be

learners of the Word, hearers of the Word, preachers and teachers

of the Word to our family, friends and neighbors to learn.

RC Sproul says every Christian is a theologian.

Theology is important. It is we should know it and it's

our responsibility to be a member of a healthy church, to

sit under good teaching. And even if you're not a member

officially of a church. I heard it said that we vote

with our feet in our wallet. Wherever we affirm, we're going

to go there, we're going to sit and we're going to give money.

And we think it all these false teachers with with unhealthy

churches. And we think, how are they so

big? Like how do they have all this

stuff that they have and we're struggling to get by And you're

like, well, because they're telling them everything that

they want to hear and the people are voting yes, we love this.

Tell me more. Don't tell me bad things about

me. Tell me how I can be wealthy,

healthy and prosper. We must preserve and defend the

truth by fighting air and preaching the whole council of

God like Paul has taught us to, like Jesus has taught us to,

like the Lord wants us to. So let me end with this main

idea. Jesus and many authors, other

authors of Scripture, warn us about false teachers used by

Satan coming into the church to deceive people.

They use subtlety in craft to minimize major doctrines.

They pretend to be one of us, claim to be looking out for our

best interests, but really are promoting themselves and

satisfying their own hunger for power, fame, and money.

We must know our Bibles and submit to preachers who do so as

well. And in this way we will become

more like Christ. We will build his Kingdom on

earth the way He has said to do it, not our way.

And I promise you, the closer you get to Christ, the more you

know about him, the more you love Him, and the more your life

will be changed. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word and your stern warnings and your

grace and your love. Thank you, God, that You have

grace on us mere humans who are doing everything we can to try

to interpret Your word, to know what Your will is for our lives.

I pray you'd give us more understanding, more knowledge,

more discernment, no more wisdom.

And I pray Lord, you'd help us to be more faithful today, as is

the goal of week in and week out, that we just become more

conformed to the image of your Son.

Help us to do that. Help us to have discernment

against all the false teachers out there in the world, even the

non religious ones that we're allowing into our hearts through

social media and everything else under the sun.

Forgive us Lord, for our sin and our ignorance and help us Lord

to love you more. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.