The End Results of False Prophets

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

In the name of Jesus.

If you would, please turn with me in your pew Bibles to Lamentations chapter 2.

And you're going to note that your pew Bible begins chapter 2 with the heading, the

Lord has destroyed without pity.

Those are insanely scary, frightening, terrifying words.

And what we're going to see here in Lamentations 2 is God

letting loose His full wrath and fury against impenitent Israel and get

a feel for what happens if you persist in your sin.

And there is only one real sin that is identified

as the nubbins of this judgment if you would.

But it comes a little bit later in the chapter.

So let us consider this terrifying description of the

Lord, our God who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love

and who pardons iniquity but who does by no means let the guilty go

unpunished.

That this is a picture of His wrath and I hate to say this, this is Old Testament so this is

type and shadow.

This is pointing also to something in the future I will explain.

Lamentations 2.

How the Lord in His anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud.

He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel.

He has not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.

The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all of the habitation of Jacob.

In His wrath He has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah.

He has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.

He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel.

He has withdrawn from them His right hand in the face of the enemy.

He has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob consuming

all around.

He has bent His bow like an enemy with His right hand set like a foe.

He has killed all who were delightful in our eyes

in the tent of the daughter of Zion.

He has poured out His fury like fire.

This is not a pretty picture.

This is not a pretty picture at all.

Over and again we hear from Scripture that God is love.

But do not think for a second that the love of God is some weird

abstract sentimentalism.

At the end of the day we have to ask ourselves, if we talk about the category of salvation, what

are we being saved from?

Whom are we being saved from?

This text graphically describes the very thing that we are being saved from.

God and His wrath against our sin.

You see Jesus bleeding, dying, suffering, languishing on the cross.

He's suffering the wrath of God in our place.

Here we see what happens when somebody persists in sin

and unbelief and in penitence.

The person who does that basically is saying to God, I don't want to be

forgiven.

I don't need to be forgiven.

I'm a good person.

Fine.

Have it your way.

Don't be forgiven.

Don't repent.

This is a picture of what is coming.

And the picture exists in the history of humanity.

In the history of Israel itself.

This is Typhon's shadow showing us what the day of judgment is going to look like.

What the impact of the day of judgment is going to be.

This is a dress rehearsal for the day of Christ's wrath when He

returns to judge.

Verse 5.

The Lord has become like an enemy.

He's swallowed up Israel.

He's swallowed up all of its palaces.

He's laid in ruins its strongholds.

He's multiplied the daughter of Judah, mourning and lamentation.

He's laid waste His booth like a garden that's laid in ruins His meeting place.

The Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath.

And in His fierce indignation has spurned King

and priest.

The Lord has scorned His altar.

Disowned His sanctuary.

He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of Her palaces.

They raised a clamor in the house of the Lord as on the day of the festival.

The Lord determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion.

He stretched out the measuring line.

He did not restrain His hand from destroying.

He caused rampart and wall to lament.

They languished together.

Her gates have sunk into the ground.

He has ruined and broken her bars.

Her king and princes are among the nations.

The law is no more and her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence.

They have thrown dust on their heads.

They put on sackcloth.

The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

My eyes are spent with weeping.

My stomach churns.

My bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the

daughter of my people because infants and babies faint in

the streets of the city.

They cry to their mothers, where is bread and wine as they faint like a wounded man in the streets

of the city as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom.

What can I say for you to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem?

What can I liken to you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion?

For you ruin as vast as the sea.

Who can heal it?

With such a terrible picture as this, the question comes up,

what did these people do?

What was their sin that was so great that God has poured out his

wrath without measure, has not withheld any of his

fury and indignation and has literally caused

mother, baby, king, priest, the greatest, the

least, to all suffer so terribly this horrible judgment

of God?

Here's the reason.

Verse 14.

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions.

They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but they have seen

for you oracles that are false and misleading.

When we think of God's law, the Ten Commandments, there's always a good reminder that they were written on two

tablets, not one.

On the one tablet are the laws pertaining to our relationship with God.

On the other tablet, the laws pertaining to how we treat each other.

It is the first table that tells us that we will have no other gods before God.

The second commandment, that you will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain or blaspheme

his name.

And we see here that what has happened is that Israel has not only persisted in

idolatry, but from that has flowed false

prophecies and they did nothing to stop these false prophets from speaking

their utter nonsense.

It is almost identical to what we read in the New Testament.

The Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 4 warns that in the last days,

that in the church of all places, that people will not tolerate

sound doctrine.

They will instead gather to themselves preachers and teachers who will tell

them what their itching ears want to hear.

And they will turn away from the truth, and the text says, wander off into

myths.

Now, if you keep your finger here in Lamentations 2, verse 14,

turn with me back to the prophet Jeremiah, the previous book, chapter 23, and

I want you to hear how Israel listened to these false

prophets.

Verse 9 of chapter 23 in Jeremiah begins with these words,

and you can almost see it in the text, the ironic air quotes.

Because of the curse, the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up.

You see, already before God's destruction of Israel, the land was beginning to reap the

first fruits of God's judgment.

All the while, the prophet Jeremiah was calling them to repent.

But, they didn't repent.

And see, false prophets, they seem to be really skilled at

putting everybody at ease.

Somehow saying, oh, the Lord is for you, he's not against you.

You're the head, not the tail.

You're the bee's knees.

Christianity isn't about repenting, it's about learning to hear the voice of God so he can whisper in your ear

just how amazing and wonderful and unique you are.

This is how they talk.

I know this from my other job.

And as a result of this, iniquity and evil flourishes in, of

all places, the church.

And in Israel, it was flourishing.

The land was full of adulterers.

Scripture goes on to say, their course is evil.

Their might is not right.

Both prophet and priest are ungodly.

And even in my house I have found their evil, declares the Lord.

Referencing the fact that now the temple of Solomon was no longer the

holy place reserved alone for the worship of the one true God.

But they had taken false gods and put them into the temple itself.

Therefore, their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the

darkness.

And make no mistake about it, these slippery paths, once you slip and you fall, that path

has one escape chute.

It takes you like a slide, like a water slide down.

It's turning courses and then you get shot right out into the lake of fire.

That's literally what happens.

So it's like slippery courses into which they shall be driven and fall.

I'll bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, declares the Lord.

And the prophets of Samaria, I saw an unsavory thing, Jeremiah writes.

They prophesied by Baal.

And they led my people Israel astray.

But in the prophets of Jerusalem, I've seen a horrible thing.

They commit adultery and they walk in lies.

The false prophets strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no

one turns.

No one repents from his evil.

All of them have become like Sodom to me.

It's inhabitants like Gomorrah.

That's right.

Impenitent Israel before the attack of Nebuchadnezzar, in God's eyes, was every

bit as wicked and evil as Sodom and Gomorrah.

And we all know how wicked and evil they were.

Therefore, thus says Yahweh Savooth.

Yahweh Savooth.

That's what the Hebrew text here says.

The God of armies.

Host refers to armies.

When Yahweh is referring to himself as Yahweh Savooth, in a way where those

armies are against you, pay attention.

You want those armies to be on your side.

Here, Yahweh Savooth is being spoken of against the prophets God has

declared war.

Behold, God says, I will feed them with bitter food.

I'm going to give them poison water to drink.

For from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into the land.

Thus says Yahweh Savooth.

Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you

with vain hopes.

They speak the visions of their own minds.

Not from the mouth of Yahweh.

They say continually to those who despise the word of Yahweh, oh, it

shall be well with you.

And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, and there's the problem, they say,

no disaster shall come upon you.

Pause there and think.

I know of Christian churches, entire denominations, who

say to those who are impenitent in their sexual

immorality, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual,

that everything will be fine with them, that love wins, that God is love,

and don't worry, just follow your heart.

After all, you have to be authentic and true to yourself, don't you?

You would be living a lie if you didn't follow your heart and do what you

felt well is who you is.

It's funny, they have everything in common with these false prophets

at the time of Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is the one who wrote Lamentations.

And so we see then, if you want to return back to Lamentations chapter 2, we see then

in Lamentations chapter 2, verse 14, that God coming out

with the gloves off in full fury and wrath, indignation and

judgment, that the reason he is doing so is laid out again in verse 14.

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions.

They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and

misleading.

And you know what Israel did about these false prophets in their midst?

They paid them handsomely.

They were quite successful.

Prophets like Jeremiah who spoke the truth and called people to repent, they were

murdered, martyred, beaten, ridiculed, treated

harshly.

Read the story of Jeremiah.

He was even thrown into a cistern and nearly died in the mud.

But tell sinners what they want to hear.

That they can persist in their sin.

That they can hang on to their wickedness.

That they can follow their own sinful blackened heart

and that God loves them anyway and they will reward you

handsomely.

In our days, the most outrageous false prophets jet

around the world in private Gulf Stream jets that cost tens of millions of

dollars.

They live in ginormous mansions with huge estates

and all of this power and influence and you know what the church says against them?

Nothing.

But dare speak out and say that man is a false prophet and watch

the wrath that you will experience.

You see, what we see in the Old Testament is type and shadow.

And I'm frightened when you put the type and shadows together.

Because just before God's wrath and judgment shows up, it was right then

at that time when Israel stopped listening to God's Word and

rewarded false prophets and false teachers who kept them comfortable in their sin.

We're at the same place right now.

Not in Israel's history, but in the history of our planet.

And if type and shadow have anything to say about this, then I'm worried.

I'm worried because there's a day coming of God's wrath and it might be just tomorrow.

Because tomorrow is Thursday.

I always think God's going to come back on a Thursday.

But it could be tomorrow.

And the reality is this.

The church has sat on her hands and strengthened the hands of false prophets.

And yet this horrible picture of God coming out full fury,

full wrath, full judgment, total destruction, is identified as

happening as the result of false teachers.

They'll run a guy out of office if he's sleeping around with women.

But they'll say nothing if he twists God's Word.

This is perverse.

This is absolutely perverse.

You need to run them out for both.

Not just one or the other.

Verse 15, all who pass along the way.

They clap their hands at you.

They hiss.

They wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem.

In this city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all of the earth, all of your enemies, they rail

against you.

They hiss.

They gnash their teeth.

They cry.

We've swallowed her.

Ah, this is the day that we long for.

Now we have it.

We see it.

Yahweh has done what He purposed.

He has carried out His Word, which He commanded long ago.

He has thrown down horrible words without pity.

He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.

The heart cry of the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a torrent

day and night.

Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite.

Arise.

Cry out in the night.

The beginning of the night washes.

Pour out your heart like water before the presence of Yahweh.

Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

Look, O Lord, and see with whom have you dealt thus.

Should women eat the fruit of their womb and children of their tender care?

Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old.

My young women and my young men have fallen by the sword.

You have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtered without pity.

You summoned, as if to a festival day, my terrors on every side.

And on the day of the anger of the Lord, no one escaped or survived

those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.

What are we to make of that?

What are we to make of this?

I know theologians who would say, well, clearly that's not from God, because God is love.

No, actually that is from God.

God in love who is slow to anger, but it doesn't say never has anger.

He does abound in steadfast love and he does forgive.

Now consider this passage in light of what Jesus tells us regarding the last days.

Let's flip over to Matthew chapter 24.

And I want you to consider what Jesus reveals here.

In Matthew chapter 24, verse 1, it says Jesus left the temple, was going away when his

disciples came to point to him all the buildings of the temple.

And he answered, you see all these, do you not?

Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and said, tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your

coming and of the end of the age?

Isn't it fascinating what Jesus says next?

He answered them, see that no one leads you astray.

Don't let anybody deceive you.

And here's the reason why.

Many.

Not some.

Many.

Many is like an army.

Many is like everywhere.

Many will come in my name saying I am the anointed

one.

And I say it that way on purpose because Christos has a little bit of a charge to it.

But we're being warned against people who claim to have a special anointing.

And he says this, they will lead many astray.

And like the prophets of Israel I should say prophets of Israel

before the Babylonian captivity, these false Christs will leave

people comfortable in their sin.

They will fill their minds with nonsense, prophesying their own

delusions of their sinful hearts.

He talks about wars and rumors of wars, which is really not the big thing.

He talks about tribulation in verse 9, which we are to expect.

But then again in verse 11.

Notice he says this again.

And many.

Not some.

Not a few.

Not a gaggle or a handful.

Many false prophets will arise and lead many

astray.

And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Listen to this.

The one who endures to the end will be saved.

Endure in which way?

How do we endure?

Well, verse 14 gives us the hint.

And this gospel of the kingdom.

The good news that Christ has gone to the cross, bled and died for your

sins.

And that he will even forgive you if you have listened and believed false teachers

and false prophets.

Even if you are guilty of running a pastor out for preaching the truth and have embraced lies.

Even if you've sent in a thousand dollar seed offering to Kenneth Copeland in the hopes that God will make you a

millionaire, he'll still forgive you.

So this gospel of the kingdom.

The good news we proclaim throughout the whole earth as a testimony to all the nations.

And then the end will come.

And so when you see the abomination of desolation, what a great way to describe the

Antichrist.

The devil incarnate.

The Antichrist.

Desolation.

Abomination.

Abomination of desolation.

Great two words there.

He's truly an abomination.

And desolation seems to be what the devil always leaves in his wake.

What God has created, the devil seems well, hell -bent on

uncreating.

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place of all places.

The holy place.

The church of Christ.

Yeah, this abomination of desolation will be a churchman.

So let the reader understand.

Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

Let those who want on the housetop not go down to take what is his.

Let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.

Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days.

Yeah, it didn't work out well for the nursing pregnant women and mothers with small children at the

time when God's fury went loose in Israel.

It will not be beautiful or wonderful in those days either.

Pray that your flight may not be in the winter or on a Sabbath.

For then there will be great tribulation such as not been seen from the beginning of the world until now and

never will be.

If you thought Lamentations 2 was bad, that was just the warm -up.

Wait till the main event happens.

And then it says this, if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.

But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short for your sake and mine.

So then if anyone says, look, here's the anointed one, here's the Christ or there he is, don't believe it.

And then he says it again.

Listen to this.

For false Christ, false anointed ones, false prophets will arise and they will

perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray if possible,

even the elect.

And Jesus says this, I've told you ahead of time.

So if they say to you, look, he's in the wilderness, do not go out.

If they say, look, he's in the rooms, don't believe it.

For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Wherever the corpse is, the vultures will gather.

And then immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened.

The moon will not give its light.

God acting in judgment, not holding back, not limiting

his wrath to a small postage stamp piece of property in the Middle East.

Now his wrath is poured out on the creation itself, our solar

system, our galaxy, all of the created universe.

The stars will fall from heaven.

The powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man.

All the tribes of the earth will mourn.

They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds

from one end of the heaven to the other.

And see in the midst of Christ's wrath and fury and not holding

back, nothing is going to survive except you,

except the elect.

Those who have been joined to Christ in the waters of baptism.

Those who have heard the clarion call of the gospel to repent of their sins and have come

weeping, Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

And have received the forgiveness of sins that Christ has promised because he's gone to the cross.

You see in this great day of God's unbridled fury and wrath,

first order of business is to call out those whom he loves.

Those whom he has bled for, died for, who believe in him and are hoping for him.

Who didn't listen to the false prophets, who didn't listen to the false anointed ones

and whose magic tricks and false miracles didn't fool them for a second, but

kept their eyes on Christ.

Abided in him, having the Lord's supper, abided in him and

trusted in him and would not be taken off of focusing on Christ by

listening to him in his word where he's promised to be for them.

Those whom he loves he will gather and they, they will join him in

the air.

So, the verse then goes on.

So from the fig tree learn its lesson.

As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.

So also when you see these things you know that he is near, that he is at the very gate.

Brothers and sisters, we are seeing these things now.

He is near.

Very near.

So I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but Christ's words will not pass away.

So concerning the day or the hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son, but the Father

only.

I'm betting on a Thursday.

For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving and marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.

And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.

So will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Then two will be in the field, one taken, one left.

Two women will be grinding at the mill, one taken, one left.

Therefore, stay awake.

You don't know on what day your Lord is coming.

And brothers and sisters, that's what Lent is all about.

It's about staying awake.

It's about not being lulled to sleep by the nonsense of your own

sinful nature that says sin is not a big deal.

It is a big deal.

It's so big that it took God Himself becoming a man

in order to save us and to forgive us of every single one of our sins.

Whether we count them as great or small, as white lies or as black lies,

it doesn't matter.

All of it cost Jesus Christ to suffer on the cross the unbridled,

unrelenting, full wrath and fury of God against sin.

That's what He was doing that Friday afternoon.

So therefore you must be ready.

The Son of Man is coming in that hour you do not expect.

Do not seem to think that you can leave here and say, well I believe

pastor's right, but I'm going to continue to nurse and pet that sin.

I'm going to treat it like well, it's like my cat or something.

Maybe hide it in the closet and feed it that way.

Maybe no one will notice it's meowing.

You don't know when Christ is coming back.

And the reality is that when you step into eternity on the day when you breathe your last, the end has

come for you.

So here we've seen in Lamentations a picture of God's wrath

immediately preceded by false prophets and false teachers who were telling people what they wanted to hear and kept

them comfortable in their sin.

Are you uncomfortable now in yours?

Because after reading these texts, I am extremely uncomfortable with my sin.

And that's the way it should be.

But let me comfort you with these words.

In our Lenten travels together, we are heading towards Good Friday.

And let us always keep our eyes on what Christ did on that Good Friday.

He took your sins, all of them.

My sins, all of them.

And he was beaten.

He was bruised.

He was spit on.

Punched in the face.

Mocked, scorned, flogged.

Instead of you.

Instead of me.

And then nailed to a cross, suspended between heaven and earth in order to make peace

with this God.

The God who has this kind of frightening wrath against sin that we have all earned.

He is our reconciliation.

He is our peace.

He is the one that has literally undone the hostilities

by dying instead of you.

So let us repent.

Be forgiven.

And endure to the end by trusting in those words.

Trusting in that good news.

Because that's the only way we're getting out of this alive.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

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