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And those of you here, grab a Bible, something to write with.
We're going to pray, and we are going to get started.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word, we come to you.
And as you've taught us today in your text, that you hear us when we pray according to your will, and we know that you
will our sanctification.
We ask that through your Holy Spirit, help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there.
Show us the ways in which we have departed from the truth, so that we may repent and believe rightly and be forgiven
for our idolatry.
We also pray that through your word, you would strengthen us in confidence in the gospel, and also in our
love towards each other.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Okay, last week, I did a little bit of an excursus.
We talked about Balaam, right?
Balaam and his talking donkey.
But the point of this was, of that little exercise, was to talk about the lying
prophets.
In our days, we do have people who are lying prophets.
And they're actually, the prophecies that they're engaging in are false prophecies, and it actually makes them run afoul
of the biblical commandments against what's called divination.
Divination is when you are speaking on behalf of God, but you're not.
So divination is a false thing, and so it's a breaking of the second commandment.
We Lutherans number the commandments a little bit differently than the Reformed.
The Reformed kind of changed things up.
The church historically has always understood the second commandment to be the commandment that you shall not take the name of the Lord
your God in vain, or misuse the name of the Lord your God.
And when Luther is asked the question, vastus das, what does this mean?
He says that we should fear and love God so that we do not curse or swear, use satanic arts, or
lie or deceive by God's name.
Instead, we are to call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.
So God's name is holy, and you dare not speak words for God that God hasn't
spoken to you.
And none of the real prophets of the Old Testament ever said, I
feel the Lord is telling me right now in this season that there's going to be
a release of suddenlies.
When they talk like this, I'm always thinking I better go grab some Kaopectate, because every time I have a
suddenlie, it gets really dangerous.
No, no, the prophets never did cold readings.
Is there anyone here whose dog died in the year 1974?
I'm sensing the letter H.
All those cold readings are scams.
These are the games of faux magicians and things like this.
So we noted then that Balaam, who was a very wicked man, he was not a believer in
the one true God, and he had a run -in with Jesus, and
this fellow Balaam had been hired, he was a prophet for a prophet, hired to curse Israel.
God wouldn't let him do that.
God made it very clear with a sword to his neck, he's only to speak the words given to him by God,
and he ends up prophesying about Christ on at least three of the occasions of his
prophecies, and one of them is spectacular.
He's also the guy who the Lord revealed that the Lord doesn't lie.
He's not like men that he should lie.
And after he had prophesied and lost all that money and honor that he
would have received from Balak, the son of Zippor, he bore God a grudge, and he's the one who
taught the Moabites how to get God to
attack Israel.
He sent in all the hot chicks, and think of it as like sexual warfare,
the fembots, I mentioned them last week, and a whole lot of them died as a result of
that thing.
But we also learned that Balaam died himself.
Israel ended up putting that wicked fellow to death.
But you'll note, like I said, he never went to Jennifer Leclerc's prophecy school.
He never received a prophetic activation from the World Council of Prophetic
Elders or weird things like this, right?
Nope.
Have you ever stopped to think just how absurd it is when somebody says that they believe that God is
talking to them and they feel like he might be saying, okay, I mean, this
is part of the reason why I created the, we call him the Vincent character on the
Fighting for the Faith podcast.
He shows up from time to time in the video version as well.
And Vincent is the lamest Holy Spirit ever.
He doesn't even know how to tie his shoes.
I mean, what kind of God do you believe in when you go, hi, this is the Holy Spirit, and I
have a message for you, and I know it's really hard for you to hear me.
Are you there?
Hello?
Believe me, the God who spoke the universe into existence, when he said, let there be light, the universe
didn't go, well, I feel like I should brighten up a little bit.
God said, let there be light, and there was light.
God said, let there be animals, and there were animals.
You get the idea here.
I'm sure if God were communicating to you, you wouldn't be sitting there going,.
I'm not sure.
I'm uncertain that this could possibly be God.
Maybe it's some pizza from last night.
You get the idea.
So you're gonna note here, Jeremiah is going to, at this point, really
rip, and I mean hard, into the false prophets.
And what I wanted to show you here, I'm gonna just show you a little bit of an interesting text.
Hang on a second, I'm trying to get you guys moved so I can type it in.
There we go.
All right, and that is in the book of Ezra.
If you look at how the book of Ezra opens up, this is after, so Ezra is the
account of the return of the exiles.
So you'll note, Jeremiah is prophesying that if you don't repent, Judah, if you don't repent of your sins,
turn away from your idols and worship Yahweh alone, then God's going to send you into
exile for 70 years in Babylon.
And we'll see this in some of the upcoming portions of Jeremiah.
The false prophets were contradicting Jeremiah.
They were flat out contradicting him.
And some of these false prophets actually went into exile in the first round, and they were
saying, the Lord has told me you guys are gonna be returning soon, and stuff like this.
And so you'll note that not only did a lot of these false prophets end up dying in ironic
type deaths that kind of demonstrate God's judgment, but the book of Ezra begins with
a vindication of Jeremiah.
So when you kind of fast forward, at the end of the 70 years, those who are in exile
in Babylon, this accounts of their coming back to Judea,
it says in Ezra one, in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia.
By the way, that has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
I have to make that clear.
It's just weird that I have to say that.
The first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, that the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah might be
fulfilled, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia.
And so you'll note here, the book of Ezra, God made it very clear he
was going to vindicate Jeremiah and make it also clear that the words spoken by Yahweh
so that they would be fulfilled because God doesn't lie.
God will never say I'm going to do this and then not do it unless somebody repents and the thing that was
promised was God's judgment and wrath, okay?
But that his words might be fulfilled and this is to vindicate Jeremiah.
Jeremiah, aside from being a bullfrog, is also a true prophet.
Yeah.
Sorry, I just, you know.
It's a long work day for me on Sundays.
You have to throw in a little humor just to see if you guys are still awake, okay?
Look at poor Bill.
Bill, I'm sorry.
Send your bills to Barb Roseboro.
If the doc, just let us know.
We might do a GoFundMe campaign to help you with your health issues after that.
Send your best coupon.
Okay.
And some vitamin C.
Some coupons and some vitamin C.
Alright, so here's where Jeremiah is going to let these guys have it.
And by the way, Jeremiah is speaking for God here.
This is God ripping into the false prophets.
Concerning the prophets, my heart is broken within me.
All my bones shake.
I'm like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine because of Yahweh and because
His words.
For the land is full of adulterers.
Because of the curse, the land mourns.
And the pastors of the wilderness are dried up.
Their course is evil.
Their might is not right.
Both prophet and priest are ungodly.
Even in my house, I have found their evil, declares Yahweh.
So a little bit of a note here, okay?
False prophets, one of the things that they do is they
strengthen the hand of those who are impenitent sinners.
When somebody speaks falsely about God, oftentimes they're giving a soft,
silky, deceptive message.
And the soft, silky, deceptive message usually will leave somebody who is
sinning comfortable in their sin, all right?
And so when we talk about false prophets today, you can also talk about false prophets
even among priests or pastors who claim to have no special
prophetic ability.
Let me explain, okay?
In the liberal denominations, and there's liberal Lutheranism in the ELCA, in liberal
Presbyterianism in the Presbyterian Church USA, in the liberal woke denominations,
they say that God blesses same -sex marriage.
On Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, we're releasing a video where I'm going to be reviewing a few video
posts by a fellow who calls himself Naked Pastor, all right?
And Naked Pastor, in one of his videos, makes the claim, thankfully he was wearing clothes,
he makes the claim that there is no judgment.
And his passage for this is, and here's how he quoted it,
from Romans 8, there is no condemnation.
See, that means there's no judgment.
Are you guys feeling a little context missing here?
Romans chapter 8, there is therefore now no condemnation.
Ta -da!
There is no judgment.
Wait, wait, what?
Right.
The text says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.
It doesn't say that there is no condemnation.
So you'll note then that false prophets, it doesn't matter if somebody claims to be receiving
prophetic insight or not, it's when somebody is speaking for God and speaking in a way as if
what they're saying is authoritatively true, and that God is going to somehow back it up.
So this then applies to pastors who twist God's word.
This applies to people claiming to be receiving direct revelation from God.
It applies to anybody who is deceiving by use of God's name.
And if you were to consider it this way, think of God's name like a logo,
right?
I just read, was it last week or the week before, that in New York,
a police bust, they found a ring of
people who were selling fake Rolexes and they took from them 8
,000 fake Rolexes that were going to be sold illegally on the streets of New
York.
Fake Rolex.
What a mess that is, right?
And why is that illegal?
Because Rolex owns their brand.
That's their property.
And when you're selling a fake Rolex, you're keeping money out of the hands of the real Rolex.
But you sit there and go, but I couldn't afford a real one.
So?
Right?
You're not entitled to one.
I remember years ago, I had a boss.
I used to work for him.
All he ever wanted was a Rolex.
And this guy was nuts, all right?
We'll call him Bill.
And Bill wanted a Rolex in the worst way because he
really believed that by having a Rolex, he would be able to communicate by having a Rolex that he was a
player in the corporate world, that he was important.
And he couldn't afford a real Rolex.
Who can?
All right?
And so I remember walking into his office one day and there was somebody I had never seen before
and he had a briefcase open and all of these fake Rolexes out and
Bill was trying them on, right?
And Bill, he says, we got an important meeting, Roseboro.
We got an important meeting coming up and we need to let these guys know that we're serious and that
we're for real.
And I said, okay, whatever.
So he was trying them on.
I said, what do you think of this one?
I go, I don't like what you're doing.
He says, I don't know if I like this one because the sweep on the second hand isn't quite the same as like on the real
Rolex.
It kind of has a little stop to it.
And real Rolexes, they sweep, you know, on the second hand.
This one kind of stops.
Let me take a look at another one.
And so finally he kind of figured in on one particular Rolex and he
ended up wearing it two days later to the actual big corporate meeting we were having with another corporation.
And I kid you not, the guy he was trying to impress, Bill had taken his Rolex and that day he
wore cufflinks with his Rolex because, you know, apparently cufflinks show, you know, when men try to
bling themselves out it just looks ridiculous.
Anyway, so he's sitting there and he's got his Rolex on and he was kind of fidgeting with his cufflinks.
I kid you not, the guy he was trying to impress looked over and goes, is that a fake Rolex?
And sitting there going...
I couldn't do that physically.
I just had to, you know, just say it, you
know.
But here's the thing.
False prophecy is a fake Rolex.
When somebody is speaking for the name of God, thus saith
Yahweh, thus saith the Lord.
I feel the Lord is saying to me.
And it's a false prophecy and God ain't talking?
I tell you, you wear that watch, your wrist is going to turn green.
This is how this goes, right?
And anybody who understands true prophecy is going to take a listen to that thing and go, that's just nuts.
But how many people are making a killing financially by destroying
people's souls?
You know, we crack up every time we play Chuck Pierce on Prophecy Bingo, but that guy
makes $1 .2 million a year saying
nothing.
He doesn't even speak in lucid sentences.
He's the guy who retuned the Mexican -American border with
a tuning fork.
Oh, he realigned it with a tuning fork.
There's a great spiritual, religious activity on his part.
This is just nuts.
And God's name is profaned because of stuff like this.
And you'll note then, what's not happening, when you hear somebody saying, I feel a shaking and
there's coming suddenly and all this kind of bizarre nonsensical Prophecy Bingo buzzword stuff, you know what
they're not hearing?
True words of God.
And the true words of God, accompanied by the work of the Holy Spirit, convicts us of our sin, helps us to
recognize how evil we are, how evil I am, how evil you are, and
also assures us that our evil has been taken care of by Christ, who's bled and
died in our place, suffered so that we need not suffer the wrath of God, calls us to repent,
and then the walk in the ways of truth, not in lies.
For false prophecy abounds, wickedness abounds.
The two go hand in hand, right?
And here's the other bit.
Even in legalistic false forms of Christianity, all
kinds of evil abounds in those as well.
It just is hidden under the carpet.
Just look under the carpet, you'll find it, right?
And it never ceases to amaze me, like when somebody comes out of a super
legalistic cult, they'll sit there and go, oh my goodness, and oh, behind the scenes, you should hear what these people were
doing.
And it's like stuff that would make your eyes burn out of your head.
I mean, that's how wicked this stuff is, because here's the thing.
The law of God, without the gospel, does not have the power to
produce in you the fruit of the Spirit.
The two, both, law and gospel, God's wrath and His grace, God's wrath against sin,
specified by and defined by the word of God, combined with the good news that Christ has bled and died
for us and that there's mercy in Christ, and then through the work of the Holy Spirit, God produces in us the fruit of the Spirit.
Without that complete message, you're not capable of producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
And so when we look at guys like, we'll point to like Tabner Smith,
who's like the most recent iteration of this.
Tabner Smith, who was a guy who was a disciple of Stephen Furtick, and he was caught by his
leadership team having an affair with one of the women on the praise team, okay?
The blonde chick, right?
Of course, it's always the blonde chick, right?
And so when they confronted him with them, he did not repent at all.
And then it turns out that his divorce records were put into the public so people could see it.
His wife had filed for divorce just a few months earlier, and her reason for it was adultery,
And you're gonna note that among these mega churches that for all their talk
of we're going to make Christianity relevant for the masses, and how are we gonna do that?
By pulling back from preaching God's word.
When you do that, evil, it's like opening the floodgates.
Because there's no power apart from God's word rightly taught and divided law and
gospel, there is no power to keep people from engaging in rank and
egregious sin.
Instead, you always have to cover it up or you make excuses for it, or worse, you lie and say,
oh God, this doesn't matter.
God doesn't care.
I beg to differ.
God does care.
I think of one of the clearest passages on this is like 1 Corinthians chapter six.
In 1 Corinthians chapter six, he says, do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
And listen to what he says.
Do not be deceived.
Don't be deceived.
Neither the sexually immoral, the idolaters, the adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves,
nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And then watch where the gospel comes in.
And such were some of you, but you were washed, referring to
your baptism.
You were sanctified.
You were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
So the idea then is that don't let anyone deceive you with false words.
And when I talk about naked pastor coming up next, on Tuesday, naked
pastor, I challenge him basically saying, by what authority are you making
these claims?
That there is no judgment.
Who are you?
I mean, if I were to come along and say Jesus really likes quesadillas and he likes grilled
cheese sandwiches, some of you might take issue and go, well, that doesn't sound right.
I mean, I'm lactose intolerant.
Of course that doesn't make any sense.
And others of you might say, praise the Lord, hallelujah.
But all of you should be asking,.
Where does it say that Jesus likes quesadillas?
It's in the gospel of Napoleon.
It's the dynamite passage.
It's in there.
So.
Sorry, Luis, that was for you.
But the point is that just because somebody is a pastor or a former pastor
or wears a clerical collar or wears really colorful vestments or whatever and
has been ordained and stuff like that, when they say something that the Bible doesn't say,
they are behaving as a false prophet.
I do not have the authority to speak any words in Christ's
church other than what God's word says.
Full stop.
Not only that, I took vows when I was ordained and installed that basically
said I would only teach what's in accord with sound doctrine and that's clearly defined.
It's clearly laid out in my ordination vows and if I were to teach contrary to that,
just like a cheating spouse is guilty of adultery when they cheat on their spouse, I
would be just as guilty if I broke my ordination vows.
What I do not understand is that in our day we have people who are clearly breaking their ordination
vows by teaching false doctrine and deviating from it and the ecclesiastical
bodies in charge of these people go, well, I didn't see it.
I didn't hear it.
You're jumping to contusions.
No, no, that's not how this works, right?
So concerning the prophets, my heart is broken within me, all my bones shake.
I'm like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine because Yahweh and because of his holy words.
The land is full of adulterers because of the curse.
The land mourns.
The pastors of the wilderness are dried up.
Their might is not right and both prophet and priest, they are ungodly.
Even in my house, I have found their evil declares Yahweh.
Therefore, their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness into
which they shall be driven and fall.
You ever heard of the slippery slope, right?
It's as if God takes the slippery slope argument and says, you know what?
I'm gonna use that and he's gonna drive them himself like cattle, all right?
Here comes Jesus and they're all gonna scatter.
It's a trap because he's driving them onto a slippery slope and a slippery path so
that they will fall.
I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment declares Yahweh.
And here's the thing.
There isn't a false prophet alive today if they do not repent who will not experience a day of disaster.
It could happen collectively.
It can happen individually.
But each of us has an appointment with Christ and it will
not go well.
It will be a disaster for those who twist and manipulate his words.
And the prophets of Samaria, this is the old northern kingdom.
Those guys are gone by the time Jeremiah writes this.
The northern kingdom, the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom, they refused to repent.
They persisted in their wickedness and their idolatry despite the fact that God sent prophet after prophet.
Elijah and Elisha were prophets of the northern kingdom and their exploits are
written for us in scripture.
Jeremiah is a prophet to Judah and Samaria and the northern kingdom, they're all gone.
They didn't repent.
God said fine.
And he scraped them out of the northern kingdom and they were replaced
with Amorites and Syrians.
So in the prophets of Samaria, I saw an unsavory thing.
They prophesied by Baal.
And Baal, of course, is one of those deity that requires human sacrifice.
And they led my people Israel astray.
But in the prophets of Jerusalem, I've seen a horrible thing.
If you think that prophesying by Baal is bad, watch how bad this is.
They commit adultery.
Prophets committing adultery.
Doesn't sound too crazy nowadays, does it?
You guys remember Todd Bentley?
Todd Bentley, he had his Lakeland revival up and running the very first year I
did Fighting for the Faith as a podcast.
And we reviewed some of his messages from Lakeland.
And this guy couldn't rightly handle a biblical text at all to save his life.
And it turns out that during the Lakeland revival, they had C. Peter Wagner, they
had Bill Johnson, they had Chuck Pierce and other notable apostles come and lay
their hands on him and give him an apostolic commissioning.
But while they were all hearing God and they were prophesying words that God were giving
them over Todd Bentley while he was at the Lakeland revival,
but nobody was talking about the fact and God failed to mention to any of them that
Todd was getting drunk every night and that he was sleeping with the family babysitter.
And that came to light like days after his apostolic commissioning.
And yet you would lead me to believe that God was talking to Cheyenne when God told
Todd Bentley through Cheyenne that he was going to be the leader of a big movement and all this
other kind of stuff.
It's just nonsense, right?
And so you'll note then, pay attention, pay attention.
False prophets, they do not curb sin.
Oftentimes they're committing it themselves.
They commit adultery and they walk in lies.
Again, the Hebrew word halak here, all right?
This is a real Hebraism in the sense of, you can talk about walking from like point A to point B, but when it
talks about walking and how you conduct your life, that's the whole point.
These are prophets, people who claim to be speaking for God.
They are committing adultery and they are conducting their whole lives in lies.
And this stands, according to the prophet Jeremiah, in contradistinction to the prophets of
Samaria as a wickeder form of deception than
what was even happening in the Northern Kingdom.
They strengthen the hand of evildoers so that no one turns from his evil.
I mentioned it in the sermon and I'll stand by my words here.
I was stunned in a very happy way when I heard that the Roman Catholic
Church was going to be withholding the Lord's Supper from Nancy Pelosi.
I'm thinking, finally somebody understands just how wicked it is.
Now it's true that Nancy Pelosi has been an ardent defender of abortion for a long
time, but all of a sudden it got to the right people's attention due to the fact that Roe v. Wade is about to
be overturned and her and Focahanas have been in full screech mode for
how many days now, right?
So I'm very happy to hear this, but the reality is that the Roman Catholic Church, by not
cracking down for all these decades, they've only strengthened the hands of
those in the Democratic Party or others who are supporting abortion.
They should have been called to repentance a long time ago.
And I would note that this should then apply to the President of the United States as well.
Let's be blunt.
This has nothing to do with politics.
This has to do with truth and about the commandment, thou shall not murder.
Murder should never be a political item where we debate it.
So they strengthened the hands of evildoers and that no one turns from his evil.
All of them have become like Sodom and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.
And again, Jeremiah is making a comparison which says that Judah is worse.
And you'll note the reference to Sodom and Gomorrah.
What was their sin again?
And if you answer, well, they weren't very hospitable.
I would argue, yes, that's correct.
Homosexual gang rape would be very unhospitable.
But the issue is a little deeper than lack of hospitality.
And the reference here is a clear reference to what was taking place in the temple in Jerusalem
at the time.
Remember, at the time Jeremiah was prophesying, there was a male cult
shrine brothel and male cult prostitutes as part of
the religious practices and rites that were taking place in Solomon's temple.
Not only are evildoers not turning from their sin, they're practicing an
egregious, abominable sin in the very temple complex of God
itself.
Therefore, thus says Yahweh, Again, I don't like it when it translates sava here
as host because God's kind of flexing a little bit here.
It's the Lord of armies, Yahweh of armies, okay, which invokes
the multitudes of legions upon legions of the angelic heavenly host.
It invokes the book of Daniel, which hasn't even been written yet, but you get the idea.
I mean, God is flexing here.
Therefore, thus says Yahweh of armies concerning the prophets, Behold, I will feed them with bitter food.
I will give them poison water to drink from the prophets.
For from the prophets of Jerusalem, ungodliness has gone out into all the land.
This is an indictment against the very religious institutions that God had
set up.
They had corrupted them to the point where these institutions were now basically not only
approving of sin, they were practicing it themselves and saying God is completely fine with this.
Well, yeah, and so Josh pointed out that and condemning anybody who would say this was wrong.
I would note that prior to this, anybody who spoke out was murdered by King Manasseh.
Back in the day, you know, so in the time of King Manasseh, if you spoke the truth, they didn't
cancel you.
They murdered you.
Canceling was actually like permanent.
It was a permanent cancel.
That's right.
All of them were suicided.
So, all right.
Now, thus says Yahweh of armies, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain
hopes.
They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of Yahweh.
They say continually to those who despise the word of Yahweh, it shall be
well with you.
And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster shall come
upon you.
And whose name are they using to say that?
God's.
Could you imagine?
You go to church and you find out, well, that thing I was feeling guilty about, turns out God's okay
with that.
He's not.
Who among you, who among them, has stood in the counsel of Yahweh to see and to hear his word?
Who has paid attention to his word and listened?
I love this little reference here, see and hear his word.
So then go, what do you mean, see his word?
You could talk about the written word, but I like to think of Jesus, who is the word of God made flesh, right?
So, who paid attention to his word and listened.
Behold, the storm of Yahweh, wrath has gone out.
Uh -oh, look at that.
There are people who legitimately in our day say God has no
wrath.
They are liars.
They are not speaking the truth.
They are trafficking in lies.
And anyone who says, oh, God doesn't have any wrath, that's unbecoming of God.
Brian McLaren's explanation for all the Old Testament passages that talk about the wrath of God, here's his
explanation.
In his book, A New Kind of Christianity, that's the title of it.
A New Kind of Christianity.
Is there an old kind and a new kind?
I thought it was the faith once delivered to the saints.
Here's his explanation.
He says the Bible is a man -made product.
And what happened back then was that people were using their
experiences and their lack of maturity to describe God as
best as they could at the time.
But as a race, we've matured beyond that.
And so now we know that that's a childish way to think about God.
And they were probably projecting their own anger issues on the deity.
What's sad is that people are sitting there going, dude, that totally makes sense.
Right, you must be in Colorado smoking pot.
What is wrong with you, right?
This is not how this works.
I'm a little feisty today.
Note here, the text says, wrath from God has gone forth.
A whirling tempest, it's gonna burst upon the head of the wicked.
And by the way, historically, isn't that true?
Remember, Ezra begins his book by vindicating the
prophecies of Jeremiah.
The wrath did come out.
It did burst upon the head of the wicked.
Didn't Nebuchadnezzar show up, just like God said he would?
The anger of Yahweh will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart.
In the latter days, you will understand it clearly.
I did not send the prophets, yet they ran.
Let this sit in for a second here, okay?
Kevin Zadai, okay?
Another of today's modern false prophets.
He claimed that God, that Jesus appeared to him.
One time, Jesus appeared to him after he died in the dentist's chair.
I've never heard of anyone dying in a dental chair before until this guy came along, okay?
I'm thinking, not sure how this happened.
He was apparently dead for 45 minutes.
I guess it takes dentists longer to resuscitate people because they don't have the same set of tools.
But he claims that during his 45 minutes that he was dead, he had an extended time where he
saw Jesus and talked to Jesus and learned all kinds of things from Jesus, including that Jesus
apparently, when Jesus went to hell, Jesus told him he was all by himself in hell.
He was all by his lonesome, that not even the Holy Spirit was there, and he felt really sad and really lonely, and the
only way he was able to get through the ordeal was by quoting the Psalms to himself.
All of this is recorded in his book, and Michael Brown wrote the
foreword to it.
Right, okay, he wrote the foreword to it.
I think it's called the mystery words or something like this, right?
Yeah, the forgotten mystery words.
And anybody with, like, two biblical pennies to rub together
would recognize that this man was not sent by God, that whatever happened to him in
the dentist's chair, it might have been that he was just having a bad experience because of the Laffy Gas that
they give you when they're working on your teeth, right?
They only put you into twilight sleep, you know, when you have your dental work done.
Anyway, so he wasn't sent by God.
The words he's speaking are not from God.
God didn't send, you're gonna agree with this, Kay Nash, God did
not send Queen Bola Adelani, all right?
God didn't send any of these people.
They are not speaking words from God, yet they are running and they are filling the church
with complete absurdities, and what's really fascinating to me is that some of these people who
traffic in these false prophecies are fully aware of prophecy bingo.
They're fully aware of it, okay?
And yet they aren't turning away from any of this.
They aren't turning away from any of their nonsense.
God says, I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
If they had stood in my counsel, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and they would have turned
them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds, all right?
So when you're listening to Kay Nash talking about her latest download from God, right?
And she's blathering on about how this next season there's gonna be a double portion blessing
anointing thingy that's released in the sound atmosphere and just nonsense, right?
And she's screaming it at you at the same time.
Please stop yelling at me, right?
Is she actually turning anyone away from their sin?
No.
Not a bit.
Or any of them from their evil deeds.
Is she invoking the cross of Christ and telling them that there's forgiveness in Jesus
for their egregious breaking of his commandments?
You know, crack up.
Somebody recently described me as an extreme ultra -right conservative.
You know.
Extreme ultra -right.
You know, right?
Because I give no credence to any of these people.
None.
But neither did Jeremiah and neither does God.
So God asks a question.
He says, am I a God at hand, declares Yahweh, not a God far away?
Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares Yahweh?
Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares Yahweh?
I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have
dreamed, I have dreamed.
How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of
their own heart?
Oh, you're just a filthy, rotten cessationist.
That's an unbiblical position.
You need to repent of that.
No, you need to deal with the fact these people are filling your heads with nonsense.
Utter lies.
These are not words from God.
They are prophesying the deceit of their own hearts.
And they think to make my people forget my name by their dreams.
They tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for all.
So let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream.
But let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.
And it's this verse right here.
If you've ever heard anybody say that pastors speak
prophetically,.
They're right.
So if you were to think of it this way, I am the pastor of a Kungs of Inger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, don't you know?
That being the case here, when I am preaching God's word, let the one who
has my word speak my word faithfully.
In that sense, all pastors are prophets.
In that sense.
And then they can be brought into the category of either a true prophet or a false prophet.
Is this pastor faithfully speaking the word
of God?
Or is he speaking lies and the deceit of his own heart?
It applies even in a non -prophetic sense.
So this is kind of the expanded definition then of prophecy.
So here's the best part.
I could say every single Sunday you guys show up, and every time you show up to a catechism
class or to a Bible teaching or whatever, I am prophesying.
And I can say, thus saith the Lord.
And the cool bit is you can follow along and read it with me.
You can fact check it.
You can read it in the original languages and that's the point.
So let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but one who has my word speak my word faithfully.
What has straw in common with wheat?
Nothing.
Have you ever heard somebody say, well, I know that my pastor isn't that good at handling the word of God, but
I've personally learned how to eat the meat and spit the bones.
Have you ever heard this?
So the analogy then, if anyone ever says that to you, have you read
Jeremiah 23 verse 28?
That's like telling me that I need to eat both wheat and straw.
I can assure you, despite the fact that straw may be a high fiber diet, my doctor hasn't
prescribed it and even if he did, I wouldn't take it.
Wheat, yes.
Straw, no.
Is my, not my word like a fire, declares Yahweh, and like a hammer that
breaks rocks into pieces?
And you'll note here, that's the point.
The people who are telling you lies are creating a nice, soft, fluffy
pillow for your conscience to lie on and they might even put one of those chocolate mints there for
you.
Because we do not want to cause discomfort because, well, when you feel convicted of your sins, that
might make you feel psychologically uncomfortable.
But God says, is not my word like fire?
Declares Yahweh, like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces and you're the rock.
Therefore, behold, I'm against the prophets, declares Yahweh, who steal my words from one another.
And note, God doesn't here take, he doesn't take the Michael Brown view.
The Michael Brown view is that, well, you know, giving a false prophecy doesn't really make you a false prophet.
It just means that you prophesied falsely and you need to go back and kind of retool and pay closer
attention to when God is talking to you and maybe not mix his words with your feelings and stuff like this, but we don't
need to reject you.
We just need to encourage you to do better at this prophecy thing.
It just makes you one who needs to study more.
Yeah. Yeah.
But God says, I'm against the prophets who declare,
who say, declares the Lord, who steal my words from one another.
Behold,.
I'm against the prophets, declares Yahweh, who use their tongues and declare,
declares the Lord.
I'm against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, and who tell
them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness
when I did not send them or charge them.
So they do not profit this people at all, declares the Lord.
Now, this gets into another issue, kind of side issue, but it's related.
In confessional Lutheranism, in the Augsburg Confession, we specifically
state that nobody, no man has the right to preach in Christ's church without
a proper call.
And how is one properly called?
Answer.
Somebody has to legitimately, before they can be a pastor, have to study.
They have to show themselves approved.
They have to demonstrate that they have a teaching gift and that they are capable of rightly
handling God's word.
And that is not, it doesn't work with, say, well, my dad was a pastor so I can be a pastor.
That doesn't work.
And just because you wear skinny jeans doesn't mean that you're qualified to be a pastor.
And if you know how to work a smoke machine and a laser, that doesn't make you qualified to be a pastor.
And so you're going to note here that this legitimately talks about the fact that these people
God didn't send them.
And so I always find it fascinating that when I bring up the fact that certain people,
they've never been to Bible college.
They never darkened the door of a seminary.
And the only reason why they're pastoring a particular place right now, using pastor in a very loose
term here, the only reason they're doing it is because their dad was the guy who preceded him.
Cough, cough, Joel Osteen.
When did Joel Osteen ever study
and show himself approved?
Has he ever been formally trained in preaching and handling and
interpreting God's word?
How is he the pastor of Lakewood?
How is he the pastor?
Answer to the question.
He was the guy who was the producer of the videos when his
dad was the guy in charge of Lakewood.
And they chose him because he's an Osteen.
I assure you that if I were to get hit by the proverbial bus next week, that Kongsvinger will not be
calling Joshua Roseborough to be the pastor.
I'd never accept it.
And they shouldn't.
So when you bring up the fact that people actually, according to scripture, must study,
must show themselves approved, that there are actual qualifications.
Qualifications in both doctrine, ability to teach, as well as moral doctrines.
Hang on a second here.
I hit the wrong thing here.
All right.
But, and here's the thing.
You sit there and go, people say, oh, well, don't you think it's misogynistic that you believe that women can't
be pastors?
The scripture says, has to be a husband of one wife.
He, he, he, he must study and show himself approved.
All that being said, you're going to note then, of the men in our population,
even among men, there's only a few men that meet the qualifications to be pastors.
And they have duties.
They have duties to preach the word,.
To reprove, rebuke,.
To exhort with patience and sound doctrine.
And today, you know, anybody who tells a good joke, they have the ability to make people laugh like a
standup comic.
They're considered a shoe -in to be a megachurch pastor.
But rightly handling God's word, nobody cares about that anymore.
God doesn't send men into the pastoral office who have not studied and shown
themselves approved.
When somebody doesn't meet the biblical qualifications to be preaching in Christ's church
and they're there anyway, they've jumped the fence.
They haven't been called by God.
In Christ's church, they do not have a right to speak.
And those who put them into place have rebelled against the clear instructions of God.
I know I might as well just go with this ultra -conservative thing.
You know, just sound like I'm unbending at the moment.
Right, okay.
I'm against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, who tell and then lead my people astray by their lies,
their recklessness.
When I did not send them or charge them, so they do not profit this people at all, declares Yahweh.
When one of this people or a prophet or a priest asks you, what is the burden of the Lord?
All right, that was like one of those buzz phrases back then, okay.
You know, what's the Lord burdening you with right now, brother?
You shall say to them,.
You are the burden.
Okay?
He ran out of locusts.
I will cast you off, declares Yahweh.
So note here, God's even familiar with their religious, pious -sounding buzz phrases, and he's
spinning them back into their face.
As for the prophet, priest, or one of the people who says the burden.
Of the Lord,.
I will punish that man and his household.
Thus shall you say, everyone to his neighbor and everyone to his brother, what has the Lord answered,
or what has Yahweh spoken?
But the burden of Yahweh you shall mention no more, for the burden is every man's own word,
and you pervert the words of the living God, Yahweh of armies, our God.
Thus you shall say to the prophet, what has Yahweh answered you, or what has Yahweh spoken?
But if you say the burden of Yahweh, thus says Yahweh, because you have said these words, the burden of Yahweh, when I
sent you to you, saying you shall not say the burden of Yahweh, therefore behold,
I will surely lift you up, cast you away from my presence, you and the city that I gave to you and your
fathers, and I will bring upon you everlasting reproach, perpetual shame, which shall
not be forgotten.
Man, God doesn't seem like He's giving them anything here.
God doesn't seem interested in saying, well, we need to just think the best about them and overlook
some of their mistakes and their missteps and things like this.
No, this is not the attitude of God at all.
Only His words,.
Rightly preached,.
Who turn sinners from their evil, are to be heard in God's churches.
And then with that message comes the gospel and the good news of the forgiveness.
Of our sins.
Because everything, the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
And you'll note then that God in acting in judgment does so in mercy.
If those people will not turn, God's going to take the cancer and He's going to cut it out
so that it doesn't keep spreading.
So pay attention.
Let me back up through.
Holy smokes.
Oh, Manischewitz.
Oh, no, no, no.
Stephen Elliot, you cannot invoke that.
Joel and Victoria Osteen, a .k .a. Mr. and Mrs. Shiny Teeth, are holding a crusade at Yankee Stadium, August 6th.
No, no. I had to think about it, Luis, but I think I'm going to pass.
Two reasons.
Number one, Yankee Stadium is obviously a temple to Baal.
So...
Now, if it was at Dodger Stadium, there would be more temptation here.
But, yeah.
And then, of course, the fact that Joel and Victoria are going to be at the temple of Baal in New York, that is more...
I'm pretty sure like a black hole is going to open up and swallow them all whole.
Anyway.
Let's see.
Oh, is Chuck Pierce responsible for the border crisis then?
Oh, yeah.
I...
That's a good question.
So how come it's always someone on the praise team that gets involved in sin with the so -called pastor?
Am I the only one who sees that connection?
It is...
Jeff, by the way, that is a common thing.
I, you know, I'm just telling you.
And you'll note that so much of these praise songs, they're super seductive anyway.
When you're singing love songs to Jesus, there's a reason why I do not like contemporary praise songs because I end up
seeing Jesus in drag and it's like, no, no, no.
You know,.
And no way, you know,.
Jesus, I love you.
It's like, okay, this is getting weird and creepy, you know.
So I'm just saying because their definitions of love and the praise bands.
Are, I hate to say it,.
They're acting seductively.
It's a problem, right?
Victor says, how long before one of these prophets reinterprets the book of Judges to be prescriptive?
We're in all kinds of interesting times.
Oh, Victor, you're behind the times, dude.
I mean,.
Have you not heard my sermon reviews on Gideon?
And...
You need to go back through the archives of Fighting for the Faith and listen to my reviews of people
teaching on the story of Gideon.
Where God shows up to Gideon and says, you know, to him, mighty man of valor,
And Gideon's like, what are you talking about?
And they'll say things like, this is God talking to you.
God's saying to you that you're a mighty man of valor and stuff like this.
Like, no, I'm not.
Let's see here.
I think there's an attraction to praise bands the same worldly bands have because music can be central.
Yep.
Sylvester Family is in agreement with me.
Thank God I'm not on my own on this one.
Dynamic.
Their lyrics are not sound.
Right on.
I'm gonna have to jump off here.
So good conversation.
And Lord willing, we will see you all next week.
Peace.