Matthew 7 - Beware! 9-21-09

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

Beware of False Prophets in Matthew 7

I looked this week and I found many slogans that begin with or contain the word beware. I don't know, maybe you can think of a few. Beware. Beware of the dog. Beware the Ides of March. Let the buyer beware.

Let the reader beware. This will bring some memories back. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. I don't mean currently, that's why I... Let the traveler beware. Councils of the Roman Senate beware. But in searching through dictionaries online, looking at Google and everything else, I could not find the most famous, the most important beware of all the Bible.

In all the world, what's the most important phrase that starts with beware? And it's Christ Jesus' words that we know very well. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Why don't we turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 7 verse 15 today and we want to look at this text, not as a catchphrase, not as a slogan, but as something critical for you to understand that you might grasp what Jesus says.

The Bible is literally sprinkled with, or punctuated with, false teachers. They're everywhere and we might put our head in the sand and say, we don't want to deal with that. We'll deal with that another day.

Maybe some kind of watchman group, some kind of theological beware group can take care of it. We want to just kind of love each other and be united. But Jesus won't let that happen. If you believe in Jesus Christ, and therefore you believe in His Word, you will see that He very emphatically states, beware of false teachers.

Not just to the church leaders, not just to the apostles, not just to elders, but you ought to beware. When you hear these descriptions that I'm going to read of the false teachers, the word in the background I want you to think of after every one of my descriptions is the word beware.

I'm going to give you the resume or the CV of the damned. And these damned people want to damn others as well. They want them to say, I'm going to hell as well and I'm going to take as many people with me as I can.

And the Bible describes them in many ways. And let me just read you a few of these, beginning with Acts and ending with Jude. Savage wolves, Acts 20. Romans 16, slaves of their own appetites. 2 Corinthians 11, deceitful workers.

Philippians 3, dogs, evil workers, enemies of the cross of Christ. 1 Timothy 4, apostates, liars. 1 Timothy 6, conceited, depraved of mind, depraved of truth. Titus 1, rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers.

Titus 3, factious, perverted. I don't know about you, but already I'm saying I get the point enough already. 2 Peter 2, unreasoning animals, stains and blemishes, accursed children, springs without water and mists driven by a storm.

2 Peter 3, mockers, unprincipled, untaught and unstable. 1 John 2, liars. 1 John 4, from the world. They have the spirit of error. 2 John 7, deceivers. And then finally, Jude, hidden reefs, clouds without water, trees without fruit, wild waves of the sea, wandering stars, grumbles, grumblers, arrogant, natural.

I won't see the movie, but I've seen the ads. There's a new movie out called what? Take Me to Hell, or Taken to Hell, I don't know the name of it, but that's exactly what these false teachers are trying to do.

And what would Jesus' words be? Beware, watch out. Now, we're in the Sermon on the Mount, and we just looked last week at the first warning. At the very end of the sermon, and you can see if you have a red-letter Bible, Jesus' words in chapter 5, chapter 6, and chapter 7.

He's coming to the end of his sermon, and now he wants the application to stand out. He wants you to ask the question, I must respond to Jesus' words. I have to do something about it. I can't just listen, but I must obey.

When Moses said to the people of Israel, listen to these words, he didn't just say listen. He meant listen and obey. And Jesus gives four kind of short machine gun warnings at the end of the book, beginning in chapter 7, verse 13.

At the end of the sermon, rather. And remember, last week, the first warning is found in verse 13 and 14. And here's the basic warning. You just don't float into heaven. You don't just kind of coast into the narrow gate.

You just don't one day wake up and say, oh, I made it. My father used to say, son, clean your room. That room needs to be clean now. It won't be clean by osmosis. Jesus lays out righteousness of the kingdom.

He lays out the Father's plan. But then he says, you just don't somehow float into it. You have to enter. When I do funerals, or when I attend funerals, rather, I'm amazed to sit and watch and listen.

And I think this. The people here in this room believe, because of their own self-deceit and because of this false teacher who stands up and says, this person basically is in heaven because they died.

It is salvation by death. It is salvation by baptism. It is salvation by something. And Jesus is saying on the sermon, there's some kind of personal response and conversion. Yes, salvation is all of God.

It's all of God's grace. But there is a response to salvation. And that response should be, enter. He could have said, believe, repent, follow, forsake. You just can't hear these words and go, I'm in.

Dad's a Christian. Mom's, I almost said, mom's a pastor. You'd be in more trouble. He gives a second warning now. And he says, there's a compounding problem. Here's the narrow gate. Here's the wide gate.

And there are spiritually false, spiritual false teachers standing at these gates. As carnival barkers. You don't need to go in this inner small gate here. You just need to go in the broad gate. I've seen lots of people go in the broad gate.

They can bring their sin in. They can bring the girlfriend that they live with. They can bring all these other things in. They're good to go. Just come on, this narrow gate, forget it. You can almost think of kind of Pilgrim's Progress background.

Next week, we'll see in verses 21 through 23, the third warning that basically shows us that you can say you're a Christian, but you might not be. All talk doesn't prove anything. And then finally, he gives in verses 24 and following, the final warning, and that's basically Jesus' words are super important.

But today, Matthew chapter seven, verses 15 through 20, the second warning. You cannot, if you are thinking about spiritual truths, go find any teacher. I know, I'll just go get my iPod. I'll just turn on any channel, and I'll just go, all right, I'm supposed to enter the gate, and I'll just, I need religion.

I need to be spiritual. I just need to find a teacher. And Jesus is gonna say, watch out, because not every teacher is a good teacher. There are lots of false teachers. They're everywhere, they're real, they're satanic, and we need to be careful.

Let's read the passage, verses 15 through 19. The main word last week was enter. The main word this week is beware, and I'll put the focus on that as I read it. Matthew 7, 15 to 20. Beware of the false prophets who came to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You'll know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 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 to the fire. So then, verse 20, you will know them by their fruits. There are two doors, two gates, two destinies, and you ought to be careful.

Now, if you look back in chapter six, verse one, you see the exact same word. Chapter six, verse one, it says, beware of practicing your righteousness before men. Exact same word we have here. The word beware, before we get into our outline, I think it's very fascinating, but more importantly, biblical, and important for you to know.

There's kind of three nuances to this biblical word, beware. First nuance, you want to turn your mind to something. It's used of a ship, and you're gonna try to bring the ship into, to dock the ship. I'll never forget the first time I turned 14.

There's a little, we had a little John boat, a little Joe boat kind of thing, and we were on the Missouri River. There's a current, and my father was explaining everything, and he basically said, you want to go upstream, up against the current, and then slowly come over to the dock.

Yeah, yeah, Dad, that's right. Then my sister said, Dad, could I ride with Mike? Sure, so my sister's sitting in the front with one of those big orange kind of old life jackets, you know, and so I thought, I don't really want to go downstream, and then back upstream.

I'll just kind of come downstream a little bit, and just turn off the engine at the last minute, and I was not aware, I was not bewaring, I was not turning my mind to this, and so I just come down the Missouri River, turned off the engine, we coast in way too fast, compounded with the streams, the river's current, and we slammed into that thing, and my sister, I could see it today, just went flying forward onto the dock.

When you bring a ship to land, you have to pay attention. So the first nuance of this word is to pay attention. You do well to pay attention to a lamp shining in a dark place, 2 Peter 1, verse 19. There's another nuance that means to devote yourself to, to occupy yourself with.

For instance, 1 Timothy 4, until I come, give attention to public reading. Paul says, Timothy, when you read the scripture, you want to make sure that's a key thing that you do in a worship service. You really want to make sure you apply yourself in that area.

But then the third nuance, which Jesus gives in Matthew 7, verse 15, of beware, it's to watch out, to be on your guard, to stand with heightened awareness. You might think of walking through a place that has landmines.

How gingerly might you walk through such a place? If you're looking for some kind of old booby traps in the jungle at Vietnam that have little strings and little kind of markers that you might be able to figure out, that could be a booby trap.

Just how carefully would you look down when you walked? That's the scrutiny that's used here. That's the intensity here, beware. If you're walking through Africa and there are 28 kinds of snakes that can kill you, I think you don't look up at the stars all the time.

I think you look down carefully to see what's around. Acts chapter 20, verse 28, be on your guard. And that's the idea here. This is a state of alert. You should be careful about this. You should watch out and be on your guard.

And basically, Jesus says it's incumbent upon you as a kingdom citizen to do that. It's a present imperative, always an ongoing, not just suggestion, but I command you to watch out. And again, it's not the elders take care of that.

The elders may take care of that, but this is for kingdom citizens. You go, you know, this is kind of an exaggeration. Everything's, you know, factor of 10 and everything's supposed to be so important.

Well, I think I'm not exaggerating today because these are from the lips of Jesus. And if he says you ought to be careful, then you should be careful. Let me give you five bewares so that you'll be properly cautious regarding false teachers.

Marching orders, if you will, for the church today, for you, so that you'll see these people for who they are. Before I get into number one, P .S., Jesus was not a postmodern. Jesus believed in black and white truth, propositional truth.

This is the way to enter. This is not the way. These are the good teachers. These are the false teachers. Antithetical, propositional truth. A .W. Tozer said, "'Great saints have always been dogmatic.

We need to return to a gentle dogmatism that smiles while it stands stubborn and firm on the word of God that lives and abides forever.'". You don't do yourself any good to say, well, it's live and let live.

And everybody just kind of, it's not that big a deal. That's your truth, Jesus. I have my own truth. Jesus, that's good for you and it applies to you. But no, this is a universal truth from the creator.

There Are Many False Teachers

Five bewares. Beware number one. Beware there are many false teachers. Plural false teachers. It'd be one thing if there was only one. Let's mark that guy. Let's kind of do the sketch like that FBI sketch and fax it around.

And so we all know what this person looks like, but there are what? Many. Do you see the text? Beware of the false prophet. No. Beware of the false prophets. It's plural. We don't know which particular false prophets Jesus was talking about in this case.

It could have been the Pharisees certainly or the Sadducees, but he's given it generally, I believe, for all the church, for all the ages. Jesus says, there's an antichrist. He has an infantry and you need to be careful to watch.

Now, when you say prophet, you might think, what's a prophet? When I think of prophet, I think of, oh, he gives predictions. He tells the future. But if you were a Jew or if you're reading your Old Testament and someone says, I'm a prophet, what would you think?

He may be telling something about the future, but he's mainly a spokesperson for God. A prophet does this. Thus saith, what? The Lord. The canon wasn't put together back in those days. We didn't have the entire revealed word of God from Genesis to Revelation.

And I bet it was probably pretty tempting for people to go, yeah, I know a good way to get people to follow me, give money to me, do things for me. I think I'll go to them and say, thus saith the Lord.

Well, how am I gonna check? I can't really check necessarily. I don't have the full canon. I have Moses. I can check some of there, but Jesus said, there are gonna be people that come to you and they're going to say, I speak for God.

False prophets use seven times in the New Testament. Why don't you move with me to Mark, excuse me, Matthew chapter 24. Let me give you another example of this. If you think, well, Jesus only said it once, so it's not that big a deal.

It's over and over and over. False prophet. By the way, you'll know the Greek word when I say it. Pseudo prophetes. Pseudo false prophets. There's your Greek word. Pseudo prophetes. Ever been to one of those churches?

They say, okay, congregation, now I'll repeat after me. Pseudo prophetes. Matthew 24, 23. Again, the focus here is there's not just one, there are many. Matthew 24, 23. Then if anyone says to you, behold, here's the Christ.

Are there he is. What? Do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. It can't be done. But Jesus is saying, it's almost that bad.

Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, behold, he's in the wilderness, do not go out. Or behold, he's in the inner rooms. Do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be.

Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. There are many. The Bible says there are false apostles, false brethren, false circumcision, false Christs. All you have to do is turn on your TV and you can see one after another, after another, after another.

You have to discern. You can't just say to yourself, I have to love and love has to accept. No, love has to discern. Love says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, I'm going to rejoice with the what? Love rejoices with the truth.

Say, well, you know, I don't really like negative preaching. I don't like it when the pastor names names. It kind of makes me feel uncomfortable. I want to be known what we're for. It's a little bit different for Jesus.

I don't see Jesus saying, by the way, some of those false prophets, they're against abortion. They don't like the poor people having no food. So let's unite with them. Let's all get ecumenical. Let's just get together.

We have a common cause. It's good to be pro-life. It's good to be pro-feeding the poor. So let's get together with all them. I think we could learn from Spurgeon. Spurgeon said, it's easy to cry a confederacy, but that union is not based on truth of God.

It's rather based on a conspiracy than a communion. Charity by all means, but honesty also. Love, of course, but love to God as well as love to men and love of truth as well as love of union. There are so many people saying, listen, here is the narrow gate.

Here is the broad gate. Let's just stand here. I almost imagine some kind of a guy selling programs at a football game or a basketball game. You ever seen those guys that sell programs? By the way, if you ever are a program seller, let me give you the line of all lines as a salesman or a saleswoman to sell programs.

Don't just say programs, you know, $19, be useful today. And you know, tomorrow they're no good. Here's what you say. You look them in the eyes and you say, you've got to have, you've got to have a program.

And here are these false teachers, many of them false prophets. Thus sayeth the Lord. Narrow gate, no big deal. Compression, can't come in with your sin and yourself. Forget all that, you have a wide gate, it's okay.

And here's what they end up doing, these false teachers. They say this, do you know what? It's not salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. It's salvation plus a little bit of works. That'll get you in.

That'll get you in, it's no problem. You don't need to do this salvation by grace alone. Salvation is of the Lord. I'm the Lord, your God, and I'm the one who'll only save. You just, you know, you don't have to do all that.

Kind of just trusting in the work of another and relying upon this risen savior. Just add a little baptism, add a little confirmation. Just add something, it's just so much better. And there's lots of them, they're all there.

It's kind of nice because it's just not one person saying it. One of the reasons why we sell books out here is because I don't want you to think I'm the weird person. And the only one, you know, seems like in a desert calling you out.

No, there are other people who say the same things. On the flip side, here's all these false teachers. Let's see, you don't really like to put some works together. So we'll say this. Salvation by faith, but you don't need any works afterwards.

You're saved by grace, but no works follow. You can just live the way you want when you're done. Good to go. Take Jesus as your hell insurance. You have to be careful, Jesus says, beware. Beware number two.

Number one, beware there are many false teachers. The second, be on your guard. Beware false teachers do not promote themselves as false teachers. They don't promote themselves as false teachers. Hi, my name's Mr. Spiritual Cyanide and come right over here.

And you can imagine the kind of, I have my wares here. They'll all damn you and send you to hell today. Come one, come all. They don't have horns. They don't have teeth and fangs and blood. Pitchforks, angels of death with sickles.

You know what they do? They look nice. They talk nicely. I mean, if a sheep ever comes up to you, you go, I think across the street, there's two sheep in that land over there for sale. If you somehow walked out of church this morning and those sheep got loose and those sheep were in the front, what would you do?

Ah, call the policemen who are ushers at BBC and get the guns out. Get the clocks out, the sheep. I mean, just about three days ago, we got the phone call and it went around our neighborhood like wildfire.

There's a bear in the cul-de-sac, a brown bear. Get the dogs in, a real bear. And there was a real bear in the neighborhood. One person called the police and they said, I don't know what to do, but there's a bear in the area.

Okay, there's a bear. If there's a bear out here, you would run. If there was a wild dog out here, you would run. If there was a wild hog out here, you would run. But if there was a nice little fluffy sheep, what would you do?

I know what my kids would be doing and they'd come running up to me with those eyes and before they even ask one question, I would say, no. Can read your minds, no. These false teachers look like sheep.

Nobody's gonna go, let me get the stick out to get rid of these sheep. They present themselves as one of us, harmless. A church father, Irenaeus said, error indeed is never set forth in its naked deformity.

Less being thus exposed, it should be at once detected. But it is craftily decked out in attractive dress. So as by its outward form to make it appear to the inexperienced, more true than truth itself.

I mean, wouldn't it be one thing if a heretic came to the door and said, Jesus isn't God, believe me, and you're gonna go to heaven. We would recognize heretics very quickly. Wouldn't we also easily detect someone who came and said, I used to be a Christian, I used to be a pastor, I used to be a preacher, but I'm not one anymore, I'm an apostate.

Believe me, there's no God. They would be very easy to detect. But these aren't heretics, these aren't apostates, these are people in sheep's clothing. Now think about it a little bit. It's not that they're trying to dress up and act like one of the lay people necessarily.

Clergy back in the Bible days, Levites back in the Bible days, leaders back in the Bible days wore what kind of clothes? It was made out of what? Polyester, of course. It's made out of wool. These leaders wear clothes that's made by sheep wool.

These leaders wear clothes that's made by sheep wool.