Choose the Right Direction
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 15 April 2012
Matthew 7:15-20 says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”
Before Easter we specifically saw how our Lord asks us to make a choice. Look at verses 13 -14 when Jesus says, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Jesus invites and pleads with us by saying first “enter the narrow gate.” And after that He gives us only two alternatives. You either choose the wide gate of human achievement where you believe you're good enough to go to heaven which leads to destruction or the narrow gate of divine accomplishment, where you recognize your own sinfulness and accept what Christ has done, which leads to life.
"Enter in at the narrow gate," is the great call that comes from the heart of our Lord, come God's way, strip yourself of your self-righteousness, your pride, your self- sufficiency, your sin, your self-will, your own goals and come God's way.
The gate is narrow because you go alone, narrow because you can't carry anything with you, narrow because you come with great difficulty, and narrow because you have to count the cost of what it's going to mean to put yourself under the control of Jesus Christ. People say, Christians are narrow-minded, that's right, that's exactly what the Bible says.
In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus recognized the burdens that men bind on themselves by their sinfulness and all the religious duties that they try to carry all alone and He said, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
A yoke is a wooden harness which is put on an ox to pull a load or for men to carry a responsibility. For the Jew it was a figure of speech where to take the yoke of the teacher means submitting to the load the teacher gives you. Here Jesus is telling them to learn from Him and the same way an ox works hard, we too have to work hard to learn from Jesus.
The difference is that instead of following the legalistic laws in your own strength, now Jesus has put the Holy Spirit in your heart and the love that comes from Christ pushes you to obey His commands. But this involves showing fruit of the Spirit and denying your flesh and reject temptations in your life and that is always hard work.
And so you find invitations in the Old Testament, and you find them in the New Testament as for instance in the Book of Revelation 22:17, “And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires let him take the water of life freely.”
There's another reason why it's difficult, and that is because standing in front of those two gates, as you stand at that crossroads are false prophets doing everything they can to push you the wrong way. They're there, obscuring the narrow gate and waving people on to the broad road that leads to damnation.
And so Jesus says, having given you the invitation I'm going to have to warn you too, and that's where we come to verse 15. He warns us to choose the right road, and it says then, "Beware of false prophets." They stand at the midst of the crossroads trying their best to trick you and to push people on the broad way, and they are very successful.
In case you don't think so go to the end of the broad way, when it all finally comes to an end in Matthew 7:22, the same many as in verse 13, "and those who enter by it are many." The many who think they've arrived in heaven and say, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?”
"23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Many people go in that way because there are false prophets pushing them that way. Jesus then in effect is saying this: as you strive to enter that narrow gate beware of those who would mislead you.
This evening we're going to look at ‘warning’ related to false prophets, and next Sunday we will discuss “watching”. Verse 15, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." Now the Lord is very clear here that He is talking about false prophets.
And the Lord has been warning us both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. For example Moses has for us in Deuteronomy 13 God's instruction about false prophets, “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’
3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God.”
And you come to the New Testament, and in Matthew 24:11 it says, "And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many." There's that word many again. Matthew 24:24, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”
They try to present themselves as if they were Christ, phonies and liars they are. And John says, "You'd better test the spirits," 1 John 4:1. And so the Bible warns us over and over about false prophets, they always have been around, and they’re going to be here as long as we live on this earth, till Jesus comes back.
Now let us think this through together, I want to give you four words that will explain this warning in verse 15. Number one is definition and by this I want to define for you what a false prophet is.
And you find in the Old and the New Testament that a true prophet was known by two things, he had a divine commission and he had a divine message. He was called by God and he was given his content by God, he gave God's message and he was God's man. A true prophet was God's voice.
Go back to Exodus 4 and you'll find that the Lord says to Moses, don't worry about what you're going to say. Moses, I will put my words in your mouth. Prior to that God had actually called Moses out of a burning bush into His prophetic office. And so there was the commission of God and there he was God's man who spoke God's message.
No sooner did God send His true prophets to speak the true message, to be the true shepherds drawing the wayward sheep back to God than Satan began to counterfeit. And as you study the Old Testament you find over and over the trouble of false prophets, they are in every place in the Old Testament. Just like they are in every place today!
Jeremiah 14:14 says, "The prophets are prophesying lies in My name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.”
In Jeremiah 5:31 it says, "They prophesy falsely, and my people love to have it so." Just like now when men heap to themselves teachers to tickle their ears. So in the Old Testament the same thing, they say what people want to hear, little lies that everybody likes, they make you feel good, and yet they are all lies.
In Jeremiah 23:14, the prophet says, "But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil; all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”
They make you proud, they appeal to your ego, they are evil, they are fleshly, they are adulterous, they strengthen the hands of evildoers, they lie but they say what you want to hear. And so the Old Testament has to constantly warn us that there's going to be prophets who are false.
The New Testament often calls them pseudo (meaning false) prophets and pseudo brothers, 2 Corinthians 11:26; pseudo apostles, 2 Corinthians 11:13; pseudo teachers, 2 Peter 2:1; pseudo speakers, 1 Timothy 4:2; and pseudo Christs in Matthew 24:24.
In Colossians 2:8, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy (the wisdom of men) and vain deceit." So the warning begins with a definition, a false prophet is one who does not have a commission from God and he does not have a message from God.
Number two, false prophets are dangerous, and they are clever. You'd be better off to embrace a cobra, you'd be better off to crawl in bed with a hungry lion, you'd be better off to drink a bottle of poison than to come near a false prophet. Because those dangers only affect the body; but false prophets violate and pervert your mind and soul.
Now why are they so dangerous? The end of verse 15, because "inwardly" that is in reality, truthfully, on the inside not what appears but what is, "they are ravenous wolves." In Ezekiel 22:27-28 he uses that same term, and so we see it not only in the New Testament but also in the Old Testament.
The number one enemy of the sheep in Palestine was the wolf, a natural enemy, roaming the hills, seeing a flock and at the precise right moment as it trailed the flock coming out of its hidden place and snatching that sheep and a sheep is utterly, totally defenseless against a wolf.
Now a good shepherd according to John 10 as Jesus delineates for us the pattern and principle of operating as a good shepherd, is always on the alert for the wolf, a good shepherd cares for his sheep so he watches, he's awake, and he's ready to protect.
There are three kinds of false prophets in the Bible, and this is a clarification that might help you in understanding it. Number one is the heretic, this is somebody who says, that's not true, that's a lie, I don't believe the Bible and teaches heresy.
Secondly is an apostate who denies the faith, who denies Christianity, who departs from it. Just take your Bible and check it, it's easy to spot apostasy because they're denying it. Matthew 7:6 says, "Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”
It is the third kind, the false prophet, called the deceiver that is the one Jesus is referring to here. This is the one you don't see, this is the one who comes with the cloak of the shepherd. This is not the cultist, this is not the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness, or somebody who belongs to Christian Science, who openly and flagrantly teaches false doctrine, those are apostates or heretics.
This is the one who talks about Jesus and about the cross and about God and about the Bible and he talks about the church and the Holy Spirit and he hangs around with people that are true Christians. And he mingles within the framework of evangelicalism, and he's on the radio and he's on television and he's in the pulpit and he writes books and he always looks like a Christian.
Now, we shouldn't be surprised by this because in 2 Corinthians 11:14 it says, "Satan comes masquerading as an angel of light." And don't be surprised, he says in verse 15, if his ministers are angels of light. We're talking about the subtle deceiver who is in our midst. Jude 4 says, "They creep in unaware.”
And you know them not by what they say, but by what they do not ever say. They talk about Jesus and the cross and heaven and Christianity, but not about sin and hell and mourning and meekness and humility and brokenness. They talk about how to be happy and how to be healed and how to be this and how to be that. They're pleasant, they seem thoroughly Christian, they say the right things and their lives even appear clean.
They are the happy Holy Spirit healers and they are the positive thinkers and they are the Christ merchants. Many people in the world today and even in our own country are using Jesus Christ as a product to pad their pockets. And they are in every area from books to music to preaching in churches and television and radio.
Well a false prophet is always in it for himself, pad his own pocket, fill his own greed, prestige, power, importance and money, the whole thing. Be aware, because they're out there. And listen brothers, I'll say it again they're not the apostates and the heretics they're the ones that most people think are Christians.
In 2 Peter 2 it 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, even denying the Master who bought them." And if you look in the end of Revelation 19 you'll see that the primary false prophet, the Antichrist in the end time is taken with the false prophet and thrown into the lake of fire which burns forever and ever.
Now how do you recognize these false prophets, how do you know who they are? That's in verses 16-20, and that's for next Sunday. And if ever there was anything we need today in the church of Jesus Christ it's the ability to separate the true from the false. I have never seen a time in my life when Christian people have been so vague doctrinally, so gullible to everybody that comes down talking about Jesus. Let us pray.