My sermon to you from these verses may seem at first to be rather dark in focus and content, but the message from our Lord’s own mouth in these verses is a dark one, for those who teach falsely and practice lawlessness.
Let’s read them first, and keep them before our eyes and our minds as we study them.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS’.”
(Matt. 7:15-23)
Now just to bring you up to verse 21 and this part of Jesus’ discourse, let me point out a few things from verses 15 through 20.
First, we see that Jesus is warning about false prophets. In that particular setting, He would have been warning them about their religious leaders, who claimed to have the words of God in their mouth, but really had deception and murder and self pride in their hearts. They were phonies; but they were worse than phonies. He called them ‘ravenous wolves’ in sheep’s clothing.
What did He mean by that, and what does it mean for us?
Remember that a false prophet is, by definition, someone who names the name of the Lord, but is not really speaking from the Lord. He is saying “Thus saith the Lord”, when the Lord has not spoken.
There are many Old Testament references that expose false prophets and what God thinks of them. I’ve just selected a few here for emphasis:
Jeremiah 14:14
“Then the Lord said to me, ’The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility and the deception of their own minds.”
Since Jesus says in Matthew 7 that we will know them by their fruits, I want you to pay particular attention in this next passage from Jeremiah, to the life-style of those who are assuming to prophecy in the Lord’s name:
Jeremiah 29:23
“...because they have acted foolishly in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbor’s wives, and have spoken words in My name falsely, which I did not command them; and I am He who knows, and as a witness’, declares the Lord.”
And I’ve chosen just one more verse that expresses the Lord’s opinion of those who are false teachers:
Ezekiel 13:9
“So My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will have no place in the council of My people, nor will they be written down in the register of the house of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel, that you may know that I am the Lord God.”
So a false prophet is someone who comes to us as a teacher, a preacher of the Word of God; one of the sheep. Jesus certainly had no need to warn against the preachers of other religions. If we are believers in God and His Christ, we are not likely to listen long to a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or even a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon.
No, Jesus issued this warning to the people because it was the Pharisees and the scribes whom they trusted. They were the ones who knew and taught the Law and the Prophets, and the people expected that they knew what they were talking about. This is what made Jesus so angry, and extracted from Him the woes that He pronounced on the religious elite in chapter 23 of Matthew’s gospel, and recorded also in Luke 11.
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from men for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering in to go in.” Matt. 23:13
“Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.” Luke 11:46
Jesus would not have warned about these things - they would not have angered Him, if no one listened. If everyone recognized these false teachers and hypocrites as harmless fools, prattling nonsense, then no real harm would result in the lives of the people, and there would be no need for warning. He never said, for example, “Beware of barking dogs and don’t listen to them”.
But the people did listen, because they saw these teachers as having authority and supposed that they should give heed to them. In the verse from Matthew 23 that I just read, Jesus is saying to them that they shut off the kingdom of heaven from men. How do they do that? Well, by not giving them the correct information about how to get to heaven for one...and those that have the right information and are going in, the false teachers actually try to hinder them by leading them astray.
The sad but almost humorous thing is that He is saying to them, (to paraphrase the verse), “...you either tell men they can’t go to heaven, or you give them false information about going to heaven, and you’re not even going in yourselves!”
Now that’s a pretty scary declaration, coming from the only One who decides who goes to heaven and who does not!
But what is all this saying to us? It is saying that we are to beware of those who we see as leaders; teachers and preachers of the Word; those who say, “The Lord says...”
You have Bibles, Christians. You are blessed to be in a nation where, for the present at least, you are free to read your Bible and study it and worship without hindrance. You have a responsibility to check the words of your teachers against the scriptures themselves, and be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit may be saying to you, and not be taken in.
I know a story of a guy, who had a big lazy ol’ hound dog that stayed by his side everywhere. One day he was sitting in his room with a friend and he said “watch this”, and tossed an old golf ball in his dog’s direction. The dog, seemingly asleep until this very moment, suddenly sat up and caught the golf ball in mid air. He didn’t chew...he didn’t spit it out...he swallowed it. GULP! No problem. It was gone. His friend asked if that didn’t cause problems with the dog’s intestinal track, and he said, “Naw, he’s swallowed lots of them and they always come back.”
(yuck)
Folks, we need to move on to the verses of our study, but I want to warn you here, to be discerning about what is tossed your way. Don’t receive every good thing you hear as from the Lord, without looking and tasting and chewing.
Don’t just gulp down the golf balls.
Is it sometimes difficult to know who is a false teacher and who is not? You bet it is. That’s why Jesus gave us the ‘secret sign’ that would tell all.
“You will know them by their fruits”
If a man’s life is generally contrary to the kind of life that God gives - the life that issues in love and good works - if it is a life that habitually contradicts the description that the scriptures give of a man of God, then I don’t care how true his message is or how good and godly it sounds, he is
NOT SPEAKING FROM GOD.
God does not speak through a lying tongue. God does not pour His new wine into a burst wine skin. God does not work through an un-yielded vessel.
So let’s go to verses 21-23 now, and see what these false teachers say about themselves, and what God says about them. (read)
In verse 21 Jesus makes a very sad and solemn statement that we would all be wise to consider carefully, and search our own hearts.
Paul advised the Corinthian believers to examine themselves, whether they are actually in the faith, or whether they have received the grace of God in vain.
We are also given very serious warning by the writer to the Hebrews in chapter six of that epistle, about not receiving enlightenment about the things of God and tasting without partaking; repenting and then falling back without appropriating to ourselves His new life.
Judas is one who should serve as a warning to us all. He actually walked and talked and lived with the Master for over three years. He partnered with the others in ministry when Jesus sent them out two-by-two to spread the good news.
So convincing was he that on the day Jesus announced that one of the twelve would betray Him, none of them knew who that one could possibly be.
But Judas was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and in the end his fruit exposed him and he came to the bitterest of ends.
Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven...” So who will enter in? The one who does the will of the Father who is in heaven.
So, Clark...does that mean that we gain heaven by works? Absolutely not! It means that the one who is truly one of His sheep will do the works of the Father, because his heart will be the Father’s own possession, and the will of the Father will work through him and his life will bear the Father’s works like the vine bears grapes and the tree bears apples.
Do you say, “Lord, Lord”? Are you one who names the name of Christ and says, “I am His and He is mine”? Then examine yourselves. What is your fruit?
Are you enamored with some great speaker; or do you find yourself wanting to emulate some person in your life who seems to have a handle on the Word of God and says all the right things and prays powerful and eloquent prayers?
What is the fruit of his or her life? How does it measure up to scripture? Trust the Holy Spirit, people. If something looks or smells or feels wrong, chances are, it is. Be discerning. Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord’, and acts spiritual and preaches and exhorts and leads, is sent by the Lord.
Next, He says, “Many will say to Me on that day...”
Now the “that day” that Jesus is referring to, is the day when all, great and small, will stand before His throne and He will separate the sheep from the goats. The day when men’s works in the flesh will be judged to be good or bad, useful or worthless, gold or dross.
It is the day that he will render to every man a just recompense.
He says that on that day, there will be MANY who will say, “Lord, Lord”, and notice that they are saying it to Him! Lies are not always spoken in secret and in the shadows, my friend. There are those who would stand before the very throne of the all-seeing God, and pay Him empty homage.
They will be brash enough and insolent enough to lie to Him about a relationship that He knows...and they know He knows...they don’t really have.
Don’t expect that they will hesitate to lie to you, if they will speak falsely while standing on the holy ground of the throne room itself, and with the very King of the ages sitting in judgment!
Now here you may say, “But Clark, perhaps they are self deceived. Maybe they are calling Him “Lord”, because they think He is their Lord!”
You would be half right. They are self-deceived, but the next words they say will be blatant lies.
Can they lie deliberately about what they’ve done in His name, and still think they are not lying to call Him ‘Lord’?
We know they are false; we know that He doesn’t know them (from verse 23) and we know they won’t be going to heaven; so common sense and God’s Word tell us that they could not possibly have prophesied truthfully, they could not possibly have cast out demons; Satan’s house is not divided against itself. And they could not have performed miracles. A few parlor tricks to deceive the silly, perhaps, but no miracles in the name and power of the God of miracles!
And what else is wrong with their claims, here in verse 23? What is the one thing that proves to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do not belong to Him? Does anyone see it?
I’ll tell you! They will be claiming access to God’s heaven on the basis of their own merit! On the basis of works done in the flesh.
“Didn’t we speak thus?” Instead of “My deliverer destroyed the works of the devil and delivered me from fear of death”.
“Didn’t we perform miracles?” Instead of “He who healed the lame and gave sight to the blind and raised the dead has made me whole and opened my eyes to spiritual things, and has given me life through His atoning death”.
Paul said, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law” and “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness” and quoting Habakkuk, Paul writes, “But the righteous man shall live by faith”.
These false prophets will expose themselves as liars and deceivers and self-deceived before the very throne of God, with their own lips, as they declare their right to heaven’s reward, not only by what they have done which in itself is evil and denying of the worth of the shed blood of Christ, but even by lying about the fact that they’ve even done those things!
Folks, there are men in our churches in our own nation today during this hour in which you sit and listen to this sermon, who are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They hunger for power and prestige and position. They are about their own work, not the Lord’s work. It is about them and what they do; not about our Lord and what He has done.
They speak from the pages of scriptures, but they do not speak from the Holy Spirit. They tickle men’s ears, but they do not lead to springs of living water.
They throw out their golf balls of error, having no redeeming or spiritually nutritional value, and people are catching those projectiles of poison and gulping them down with no thought given to the worth or the source of them.
Sometimes entire congregations follow these wolves until they one day find themselves shooting ATF agents and burning themselves to ashes, or obediently drinking poison and laying down in a grassy field to die.
But the majority, in no less danger than these, often go on leading seemingly normal, healthy, active church-lives, not realizing that they are ignorant of the truth, and never finding in themselves a hunger to search it out for themselves.
Don’t ever let yourself be devoured by these wolves; don’t let yourself be deceived. Hunger and thirst after righteousness. Strive daily to enter that narrow gate and travel that narrow way. Study the Word and commune daily in prayer with your God. Stay close by the Shepherd’s pierced side, believer; close enough and constant enough to know His voice. It is your only safety, your only protection.
I want you to see in verse 23, that the Lord will declare that He never knew them. I believe that He will say it with great sadness; but He cannot deny Himself. He is who He is, and He cannot let the wolves in to live among the sheep. He cannot take blessing from the true believer and give it to the deceiver. He cannot divide up His own children’s inheritance and keep out a portion for the stranger.
When He says here, “DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS”, He is quoting Psalm 6, in which the Psalmist is crying out to God for mercy and deliverance from evildoers.
In the final verses of that Psalm the writer is commanding the practitioners of iniquity to be gone, rejoicing that the Lord has heard his petitions and has had mercy on his weeping and answered his prayer, and as his champion, has made his enemies ashamed and turned them back.
When we look at these words in light of the relationship of God the Son with God the Father, then we can tie the declaration of Christ here in Matthew 7 with God’s promise to Him in Hebrews 1:13, where He says, “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet”.
The false prophets and teachers of every age; the wolves; those who have misled and ruined and devoured the weak of God’s pastures in every dispensation, will stand before Him finally to be judged for their crimes, and the only defense they will have - all that will come to their depraved minds to defend themselves with - will be works of wood, hay and stubble. And in that day, those they have wronged will be vindicated, and with His own irresistible word He will banish them from His presence and ours, eternally.
“DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS” And in departing from Him, dear ones, they will be departing finally and eternally from His fold. For He will have heard our petitions, had mercy on our weeping, and answered our prayers, and as our great Champion, will have made our enemies ashamed and turned them back forever.
So in reference to the title of my sermon, what ARE the marks of false teachers?
They are dry roots that trip you up in your daily walk (no call to godly living). They are the thistles that irritate your soul and steal your joy (religion of rituals). They are the thorns that impale your spirit and lead you away from God’s grace into painful legalism. They are dry grass that is good only for burning and neither nourishes you nor clothes you (feel-good teaching with no challenge, nor practical application).
Be a discerning people, but let your discernment be a spiritual one and let the Word of God be the plumb line by which you measure the truth of each man’s message.
They are deliberate deceivers, without shame, without life, without knowledge of God and unknown by Him.
But if you know that when you stand there in that day, you will be able to say, not “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do...thus and such”, but “My Lord and Savior died in my place and rose to give me life”, then you will not hear the dreadful command to depart, but a loving, victorious invitation to enter in.
ENTER IN!
“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city” Revelation 22:12-14
