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In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Geneva and Oak, and all the baptized, and dear Lino and David and Dorothy and Brooke, and all those who have made the martyr’s promise, your Lord Jesus stands before you today with some pretty simple instructions. He says, “Beware of false prophets.” And he does not say these words without cause or meaning. In fact, he wants to impress this on us not only by giving it to us today, but also by repeating it often to his disciples and even giving those instructions through the apostles as well. In fact, I think every time the Bible warns us about something, the very thing that it warns us about—whenever there’s a beware—the thing that follows is false doctrine.
Now we want to talk about who is to beware of false doctrine? How are we to beware of false doctrine? And why are we to be aware of false doctrine? But maybe even before those questions, one of the things that we just need to notice is that this is not popular. It’s not we we’re kind of in a not being aware of false prophecy mood in the church, and I think we have been for the last few generations. In fact, I had a friend thinking about this this morning, a Catholic priest who he was ordained the week before I was. He served the parish right down the street in Colorado, and when we would talk about this, he would brag sometimes that Vatican II, that great Roman Catholic council that happened in the 60s early 70s, that there was no anathemas connected to it. There was no condemning of false doctrine. It just said what we do believe. It didn’t say what we don’t.
Now that the problem is that the scriptures just don’t allow that. The scriptures send us to look with discernment for that which is true and that which is false, for that which is right and that which is wrong, for the doctrine that brings life and the teaching that brings death. So we are simply not permitted by our Lord Jesus to not care about the truth and to not worry about the truth and falsehood, to not beware of false doctrine.
Now who is to do it? This is pretty important. Sometimes we can think, well, let’s let the pastor take care of it. Or let’s let the theologians do it. Those professionals—they will be on the lookout for false doctrine, and they’ll let us know if they spot it. Now, it’s true—it’s a big part of the office that your pastors are set before you as under shepherds to look out for false doctrine. But this is there—there are no expert theologians. Every single Christian is called by the Lord Jesus to be a theologian. Oak and Geneva—you’re baptized now; you’re theologians. And everyone, from five to a hundred and five, all the way through—if you’re if you’ve just been Christians for a few days, if you’ve been a Christian your whole life—every single one of you is called by the Lord Jesus to be a student of His words and His works and His ways. That’s what it means to be a theologian. You can’t let somebody else do it. It’s your job.
There’s this great, beautiful old sermon preached by C.F.W. Walther, the first president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and it’s titled “The Sheep Judge the Shepherd.” That’s true. That you are never permitted to turn off your discernment, even when you come here to listen to your preachers preach to you. That you’re always to be comparing what you hear with the Word of God. Does it match up with the prophets? Does it match up with the apostles? Does it match up with what I learned to know and confess and believe in the Small Catechism? Does it match or does it not?
The best example that we’re given in the Scriptures are the Bereans. Paul went to Berea. He went to Thessalonica, and then he went down to Berea there in just south of Macedonia in Greece. And Luke tells us that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonicans because they received the word with joy, but they tested it to see if it matched up with the scriptures. So we are to test the spirits, to test the preaching, to test the word, even when you’re hearing it from this pulpit. You’re to test what’s being preached, and even more so as we go and we’re preached to from every different corner of the world and the internet, and we’re engaged in theological stuff that we’re testing that to make sure that it lines up with the scriptures.
Being aware of false prophets belongs to every single Christian; it belongs to each of us and to all of us, which is slightly different. But we need to be careful about both of this. In other words, every single one of us as individuals is called to be on the lookout for false doctrine versus true doctrine. Each one, and we’re all to be engaged in that work together as a congregation. We need to support each other in this way by being on the lookout for false voices, false doctrine, and false teaching that might rise up inside and outside.
As a synod, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, this is also the work that was happening in the convention last week. That we’re on the lookout for false doctrine to beware because a false teacher is, and this is the picture that Jesus gives; it’s quite frightful. A false teacher is a ravenous wolf. Can you picture that? Some wolf. That’s hungry. It’s got blood on its teeth. It’s going around looking to devour someone. False doctrine, false teaching is a ravenous wolf, but it’s covered in sheep’s clothing. It looks gentle. It looks kind. It looks peaceful. It doesn’t look dangerous at all. Now that—so we have to beware.
Now who is to beware? All of us. How are we to beware? This is the second thing. And Jesus is going to give us instructions, pretty specific instructions, and Jeremiah is going to help as well because it’s not so easy. You can’t just like a false teacher just doesn’t have like a label on his forehead that says false teacher. Or false when when false doctrine is coming out, it’s not like a cloud forms and you can tell oh there’s a red cloud it must be false teaching. In fact, Jesus says that the false teachers are hidden under sheep’s clothing, and so how are we to make the judgment?
The picture that Jesus gives us for the discernment is the picture of a tree, and he says a good tree will bear good fruit, a bad tree will be will bear bad fruit. You don’t go to a thorn bush and look for grapes, so that the way that you are to judge a false teacher is by the fruit. Now, what is that fruit? Jesus is going to go on to say, and this is the second paragraph of our reading. And it’s really, it’s kind of tight what Jesus says, but it, it, the whole import of it is that it’s not going to be easy to discern this. He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom, but those who do the will of the Father. So just because someone claims to be a Christian teacher doesn’t mean that they are. And then Jesus goes on to say, if someone on that day you’ll say, Lord, we perform miracles in your name. We cast out demons in your name. We did mighty signs in your name, but Jesus will say, “Depart from me! I don’t know you.”
So that even miraculous, wondrous signs and casting out demons are not indications of the true teacher. What are the indications? I want to underline the teaching from Jeremiah 23. It’s one of the most important passages in Jeremiah, maybe in the Old Testament, because in in Jeremiah twenty three he’s contrasting the true teachers with the false teachers, and he says the false teachers have not stood in the counsel of God. They speak a dream, a word of their own. They tell people, “Hey, don’t worry about the wrath of God; do whatever you want.” The key mark of the false teachers is that they have not stood in the counsel of God.
Now I want to understand that council of God as concrete and literally as we possibly can. There is a throne room where God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwell, and surrounding that throne is the angels and the saints. And in that throne room, in that council, there’s conversation about what God will do. And the prophets in the Old Testament they went into that room and they listened to what God was talking about. So Isaiah goes into the room and he hears the plan. The virgin will conceive and bear a son. Moses goes into that room and hears the plan of the high priest bringing the blood before the altar. Ezekiel stood in that room and saw that throne with wheels and knew that God could travel. In other words, the prophets actually stood in that place and heard what God was talking about.
And then when they came down to earth, they made it known to us in the scriptures. So that when you want to know what’s on God’s mind, what He’s planning, what His heart is like, what His wisdom is, we open up the Scriptures of the prophets and the apostles, and we see it there. We see the wisdom of God unfolded in His law, which shows us how to live, and also shows us where we fail to do what we should. And we see the plan of God from the foundation of the world to save us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the counsel of God, the preaching of law and gospel, showing you that you’re a sinner that has a Savior, Jesus Christ. Showing you that you’ve deserved God’s wrath, but that that wrath was poured out on the Son. That is the voice of the true prophet.
The false prophet, one way or another, is diminishing that preaching. And that gets us to the third question about why? Why does Jesus want us to beware of false prophets? Why is it such a big deal? Why can’t we just say, “Well, look, everybody’s got their own opinions. It doesn’t matter.” The reason is because Jesus wants us to know the truth, and He doesn’t just want us to know the truth because then we can go around bragging about it. Hey, we know the truth. He doesn’t want us to know the truth just so we can be right. He wants us to know the truth because the truth saves. The truth is that the Lord has put away your sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The truth is God loves you. And Jesus wants you to know this. And every false doctrine takes away from that comfort.
Luther, Martin Luther said it like this: Every heresy strikes Christ. Every false teaching takes away from the glory of God and the comfort of sinners. That’s why it matters because Jesus wants us to know that what he thinks about us, how he feels about us, what he’s done for us. Now here we want to be careful of two errors. There is on the one side the idea, the error, that false doctrine doesn’t matter. After all, if I can be saved and still believe a few false things, why does it matter at all? And on the other side is the error that we have to be so careful about our teaching and our doctrine because if you believe anything false, then you’re damned. Both of those are wrong.
It is possible to have two things at once: saving faith in Christ and false doctrine. The old theologian Francis Pieper he called it a felicitous inconsistency. A blessed hypocrisy, in a way that I hold to the faith in Christ and also to these different errors. But it’s not good. The best the best picture I have for this is if you can imagine having cancer. Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you’re dead. It’s not like you go to the doctor, they see a spot on the liver or whatever, and bleep you die. You can be alive and you can have cancer, but it’s not good. And that cancer will eventually eat away at that life, and if it goes on long enough, eventually it leads to death. False doctrine is the same way. You can have a false doctrine, and it doesn’t immediately destroy your faith in Christ, but it’s eating away at it slowly, slowly. And if it’s there long enough, it can destroy saving faith.
This is why this matters. Jesus wants us to know the truth. He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father by me.” This this is the to know God is to be saved by Him. I write these things, John says, so that you would know that Jesus is the Christ, and believing have life in His name. So the reason we’re looking out for false doctrine is so that we can hold on to the truth that comforts, that delivers, that saves. We are on the lookout for false doctrine because Jesus wants us to know how much He loves us, that we are His, and He is ours.
So may God grant us the spirit that we would go about this work of discerning false doctrine with joy and peace. We would know that there’s false teachers that are out there. In fact, when Paul preaches about it in Acts 20, he says outside and inside the church. We never turn off this discernment. We’re always listening for the voice of Jesus and contrasting everything that we hear with the teaching that we read in the scriptures, so that we can cling to this, so that we can wrap our hearts around this truth: that Christ died for sinners; that your sins are forgiven. That God loves you and has given His Son to die for you. May God grant us the Spirit so that we would dwell and live in this truth through Christ our Lord, Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.