Ticket Sellers on the Broad Way

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:01
If you would take out your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew, chapter seven, we're going to be looking today at verses 15 through 20.
00:15
The title of today's message is Ticket Sellers on the Broad Way.
00:28
It is providential that we have come today to the beginning of our Advent season to be looking at this verse, or these set of verses rather, because the theme for today is hope.
00:48
And as I've already mentioned multiple times in the service, we look backwards at Christ's first coming and we look forward in hope to His second coming.
01:00
And this is a subject wherein there have been many false prophets and false prophecies.
01:10
Some of the most influential cults in history have made their business about predicting the return of Jesus, predicting when He would come, giving the date, even though Jesus clearly tells us that no man knows the day or the hour.
01:33
A lot of people don't realize that the Jehovah Witnesses were formed around the teachings of a man named C.T.
01:40
Russell under the belief that they were ushering in the millennium and Christ's return.
01:46
And their history is marked with several false prophecies about the return of Jesus Christ.
01:54
Seventh-day Adventism was founded by a woman named Ellen G.
02:00
White, and it is based on many of her false prophecies about the return of Jesus.
02:07
In fact, it says on their website, it says her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth.
02:14
That's a quote.
02:15
Her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth.
02:18
Yet many of them contain prophecies about Jesus' return that are just wrong, incorrect, false.
02:25
And yet there continues to be a church based around her teachings.
02:30
More modern examples are men like Harold Camping, who died not just a few years ago.
02:38
He had a tremendous following of people who trusted in his prophetic date setting, even though he failed time and time again to get it right.
02:48
The people would say, oh, well, he'll get it right next time.
02:55
There are few things which have spawned more heresies and more false teachings than the timing of Jesus' return.
03:04
But certainly, Jesus' return is not the only thing that people have been teaching falsely about.
03:13
There are false teachers who twist and distort the scripture on every conceivable theological subject.
03:21
And in our text today, Jesus is going to challenge us to watch out, to beware of these false teachings.
03:36
And we're going to read Matthew chapter seven, verses 15 through 20.
03:41
We're going to do two sermons on this subject, one today and one next week.
03:45
So we'll be looking at five verses.
03:46
But really, we're going to be focusing on the first of these five, beginning in verse 15.
03:54
Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
04:04
You will recognize them by their fruits.
04:07
Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
04:17
A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
04:22
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
04:28
Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits.
04:34
Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
04:37
I thank you for the opportunity to study it today.
04:41
I pray, O Lord, that you will give me during this time the right words to say to your people, that it would bring conviction.
04:50
And father, conversion where necessary.
04:55
And father, first, as I always preach, I ask that you keep me from error, as I do not want to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.
05:02
I pray that I would never be a false teacher, that I would never speak untruths about your word, and that you would keep me from that error.
05:09
Keep me tied to the post of Scripture.
05:13
And give me, O God, a heart which longs for you all of my days.
05:18
And I pray, O Lord, that you would protect the hearts of your people, that you would instruct them in this time by the power of your Holy Spirit, and that ultimately your Holy Spirit would be the teacher today, opening and mending and changing hearts as he sees fit.
05:35
We pray, Lord, use this time for your glory and our instruction.
05:42
In Jesus name and for his sake.
05:45
Amen.
05:45
Last week, as you all know, we have been studying through this sermon, verse by verse, the Sermon on the Mount now for over a year.
06:09
And last week we noted that Jesus is beginning to bring the Sermon on the Mount to a conclusion.
06:16
And he is confronting his hearers with a command.
06:21
He tells them in verses 13 and 14 to enter through the narrow gate for the way is wide and easy, which leads to destruction.
06:32
And many are those who go therein.
06:34
But the way to life is narrow and hard and few there are who find it.
06:45
Later in the conclusion, he's going to also talk about a house which is built on rock and a house which is built on sand.
06:54
And he says, anyone who hears my words is like a man who builds his house on a rock.
06:57
And when the winds and the waves come and try to knock it down, it will stand.
07:01
But if anyone who hears my words and ignores them is like a man who builds his house on the sand.
07:06
And when the winds come and the rains come, it will wash it away and it will be destroyed.
07:13
And what a lot of people don't realize is that.
07:15
And we'll see this in the weeks to come.
07:17
That is simply a revision of what he's already said about the narrow and the broad way.
07:23
It's a different expression of the same truth that there are two ways to live.
07:29
There's the way that leads to God.
07:31
There's the way that leads to Christ.
07:33
And it is a narrow way founded on a solid rock.
07:36
And there is a way that leads to destruction.
07:38
And there is a way that leads to death.
07:40
And it is a broad way.
07:41
It is an open way.
07:42
It is a comfortable way.
07:43
It's a way that most people are on.
07:45
And yet it's sandy and soft.
07:48
And at any time it can give way to destruction.
07:51
Jesus places this before his people.
07:54
And in between these two very powerful illustrations.
07:58
The broad and the narrow way.
07:59
The rocky and the sandy ground.
08:02
Between those two illustrations, Jesus puts an aside.
08:10
He puts in this statement about false teachers.
08:16
The reason why he puts it right here is because he's making the point that these people are the people who are going to be pointing you down the broad way.
08:29
These are the ones who are going to be saying, don't go into the narrow gate.
08:33
Don't go down the narrow way.
08:34
That way is hard.
08:35
That way is difficult.
08:36
That way is not real.
08:38
That way is not going to save you.
08:39
Come with us down the broad way.
08:41
These are, as I've already said, the ticket sellers.
08:44
They're encouraging people down the broad way because it profits them.
08:48
As I've often said, most people who preach that are prophets for profit.
08:56
They do it to benefit themselves.
08:59
They would be just as happy to sell you a house on the sand if the price was right.
09:05
And they will.
09:08
Jesus is warning his listeners and he's warning us to be watchful for those false prophets.
09:14
And he tells us what to watch out for.
09:16
Now, I want to I'm going to give you the outline for the next two weeks.
09:20
Because originally this was one sermon and the more I read and the more I studied, the more I wrote, the more I realized that y'all weren't going to tolerate the one really, really, really, really long sermon.
09:30
So we'll make it two normal sermons.
09:34
I don't want to rush this.
09:37
This and this is such an important subject for you all to hear.
09:41
This is such an important subject for the church of today to hear.
09:46
And there is no use in rushing the text.
09:49
There's no use in doing so.
09:52
So here's the outline versus 15 through 20.
09:55
Jesus gives us one imperative and he gives us two illustrations.
09:58
The one imperative, beware of false prophets.
10:01
And then he gives two illustrations.
10:03
One is a wolf in sheep's clothing and the second is the good and the bad fruit.
10:07
So today, what we're going to look at is we're going to look at the imperative.
10:12
Beware of false prophets, and that's all we're going to look at that just short statement and how it should affect every one of us.
10:20
And next week, when we gather together again on the Lord's Day, we're going to open up the two illustrations.
10:24
And what does Jesus mean when he talks about the wolf and the sheep? What does Jesus mean when he talks about the good fruit and the bad fruit? And how does that illustrate the point that he's making when he says beware of false prophets? So today we're going to look at simply that imperative.
10:43
Beware of false prophets.
10:47
So the word beware is very important.
10:54
The Greek means to pay attention to, to keep on the lookout for, to be alert for and to be on guard against.
11:07
That is what the word beware means.
11:10
And it comes to us in what is called the present active imperative.
11:16
Now, I'm not here to teach you a grammar lesson, but I do want to tell you why that is important, because this is a command.
11:23
It's an imperative, which is to be continually and proactively practiced.
11:31
It's to always beware.
11:34
It is to do so in the present and to always be present to beware of this.
11:40
Don't become aloof.
11:42
Don't become what's the don't become relaxed.
11:49
And the illustration that I that I want to give to you today.
11:52
Some of you already know this is, as you know, I teach safety classes for firearms.
12:01
And some of you have attended my classes relatively recently.
12:06
One of the first things you do when you teach people how to shoot, whether it's for hunting or whether it's for personal protection or for whatever reason, anytime you teach somebody how to shoot, you spend the first hour of a three hour course on safety.
12:22
And what do you say in the very first part of a class where you're teaching people to handle guns? You say this is not something that you can ever take your mind off of.
12:36
This is something which you must actively consider dangerous at all times.
12:42
You treat every gun as it's loaded.
12:45
You never get in the habit of swinging it around or pointing it at people or do any of that thing.
12:50
You always keep your finger off the trigger.
12:51
You always keep it pointed in a safe direction.
12:54
You always treat it like it's loaded.
12:55
Why? Because it only takes one second of misuse for it to become a catastrophe.
13:09
It only takes a second of being aloof and inconsiderate of the danger for it to be a very serious issue.
13:19
You know what I describe when I'm teaching that in the class? A skill saw.
13:25
How many of you guys use skill saws? How many of you, when you're using a skill saw, are very aware of the danger? I had a friend in high school cut his foot off with a skill saw.
13:39
And you know what I learned right then? It's dangerous.
13:42
It's always dangerous.
13:48
When Jesus says beware, that's the intensity of the idea.
13:54
This is always dangerous.
13:56
False teachers are more dangerous than a loaded gun in the hands of a child.
14:01
They're more dangerous than a skill saw in the hands of somebody who doesn't know how to use it.
14:04
It's more dangerous than a car that's going over 100 miles an hour.
14:07
It's more dangerous than anything you can imagine.
14:09
And you must beware of this false teacher.
14:16
This is a serious idea.
14:19
And I see some of you kind of your eyes are glazing over.
14:21
Oh, he's pressing this point too much.
14:23
No, I'm not.
14:25
And I'm going to press it even further.
14:29
When Jesus uses the word false prophets here, pseudo propheton is the word.
14:36
Pseudo is where we get the word for lie.
14:41
For it means to be false or lie.
14:43
You've heard of a pseudonym.
14:45
What is a pseudonym? When somebody uses a different name, when they write a book or if they write a letter, they put a different false name.
14:51
A pseudonym is a false name.
14:54
And we see this word throughout the New Testament.
14:57
We see pseudo Christos.
14:58
That's a false Christ.
15:00
Jesus said there will be many who come and claim to be me.
15:04
There will be many false Christ pseudo Christos.
15:08
There will be many pseudo Adelphoi, false brethren.
15:11
Adelphos being brother.
15:14
There will be many pseudo Adelphoi.
15:15
There'll be many who come along and say they're brothers and they're not.
15:17
They're liars.
15:19
But the one that is throughout the New Testament over and over and over and over is pseudo propheton, the false prophet.
15:30
And let me tell you something about that word prophet, because I think that many of us get confused because we think about when you think about prophets, you think about somebody who tells the future, right? But the word prophet in Scripture is not limited only to the one who tells the future.
15:51
The prophet in Scripture is the one who speaks on behalf of God.
15:56
He is the one who speaks the word of God to the people of God.
16:00
In that sense, my job in this church, the gifting that I have is that of prophet, not as one who speaks the future, what we call foretelling, but of foretelling or the proclamation of truth.
16:17
Richard and I've had this conversation many times, right? So the prophet is the one who proclaims God's word to God's people.
16:26
And thus, when Jesus talks about false prophets, he's not just talking about your Harold Campings.
16:33
He's not just talking about your Ellen G.
16:35
White.
16:35
He's not just talking about your C.T.
16:37
Russell.
16:38
He's not just talking about people who date that.
16:41
He's talking about anyone who stands behind this sacred desk and says, I am speaking God's word to God's people.
16:48
And yet he knowingly or even sometimes unknowingly because of ignorance.
16:53
We'll talk about that next week, preaches that which is false.
17:00
So it's not just somebody who date sets the future.
17:04
It's not just somebody who is saying Jesus is coming on May 22nd or March 22nd or whenever it is, but it's anyone who stands before the people of God and says, I am speaking from the word of God and preaches that which is not true.
17:20
That is the pseudo prophet on the false prophet, the idea.
17:31
And the word false prophet is that these people are liars, they are charlatans and they are frauds, they claim to speak for God and they claim to speak from God and they are wrong.
17:49
They actually speak for and from themselves.
17:56
And there's two things I want us to note from the word beware.
18:00
This is our two part outline today to break it down a little further than we have so far.
18:05
Two things that I want us to recognize.
18:07
Number one, by saying beware, Jesus assures us that false prophets do exist.
18:22
So that's the first thing about this word.
18:24
Beware of false prophets.
18:26
The first thing we learn from that is that false prophets do exist.
18:30
I want to quote John Stott.
18:32
I love this quote.
18:32
My kids thought it was really funny when I read them.
18:35
He says, I quote, There is no sense in putting on your garden gate the notice, beware of the dog if all you have at home is a couple of cats and a parakeet.
18:45
No, Jesus warns his followers of false prophets because they already existed.
18:53
In quote, and I'll add to that, they continue to exist to this day.
18:58
The reason for the warning is that they're real.
19:01
And it seems to me that some of you don't believe that that's true.
19:08
So I can listen to this person.
19:11
It's fine, they're not hurting me.
19:13
Yes, they are.
19:14
I ask, do you realize that they teach falsely? And they say, well, that's OK.
19:18
No, it's not OK.
19:20
False teachers are never OK.
19:22
False teachers are never good to listen to.
19:26
Well, broken clocks, right? Twice a day.
19:28
Who cares? Their entire books of the Bible that are written to tell you not to engage with false teachers and give an ear to them.
19:40
First, John.
19:40
Second, Peter, Jude.
19:42
Jude says, I wanted to write to you about the gospel, but I had to stop and write to you about this because this is so important, because this is such a serious issue.
19:51
I wanted to write to you about this glorious gospel that we share in.
19:55
But I had to stop because the Holy Spirit has confronted me that what you really need to hear is stop entertaining false teachers.
20:04
Stop.
20:09
People say, well, not everything they say is bad.
20:12
Well, I'm going to say something.
20:13
This may be ugly.
20:14
I'm going to say it anyway.
20:16
Take it with a heart from whence it came.
20:17
Not everything Hitler did was bad either.
20:20
Hitler loved his mama.
20:22
Hitler painted.
20:24
He was an artist and I'm pretty sure Hitler had a dog and he probably petted his dog.
20:31
So you're going to use that to tell me that it's OK to read my comp and fill your mind with that garbage? That's a harsh illustration.
20:42
Well, I'm telling you like it is.
20:44
This is a serious issue.
20:45
This word beware means beware.
20:49
If you saw a huge electrical thing that that had all these wires hanging off of it, there was a fence that said beware.
20:57
And you saw a little child going up, sticking his fingers through trying to reach it.
21:00
Would you walk up and say, hey, you know what? Most of that won't hurt you.
21:04
Is that what you'd say? Would you say most of that won't hurt you? Give it a go.
21:08
No, you'd grab him by his little arm.
21:10
He's pulling back.
21:10
And you'd say there are some of that that will kill you.
21:15
If somebody gave you a glass of water and they say, I only put two drops of cyanide in it, what would you say? Well, don't give it a try.
21:22
Don't give it a drink because it's only two drops.
21:25
What's the chances? In the mid 80s, there was a young man and to all the people that knew him, he was a very nice guy.
21:39
He had a winsome personality.
21:41
He was handsome.
21:44
His parents loved him, thought he was a great person, had a good job.
21:49
His co-workers trusted him.
21:52
And for all intents and purposes, I'm outward appearance.
21:57
This was the guy.
21:58
This is the go to guy.
22:00
Everybody liked him.
22:02
Nobody thought anything bad about him.
22:07
His name was Theodore Bundy.
22:14
And anybody who grows up here, anybody who's lived in Florida for 20 years or better, you know who Theodore Bundy is.
22:23
You know what he did.
22:27
He'd been taking young women, luring them with nice looks and kind words, and then he would murder them.
22:36
There's no better example I could think of this week as I was preparing this message.
22:39
What a false teacher is.
22:41
They look good.
22:42
They sound good.
22:43
Their personality is winsome.
22:45
They come in.
22:46
They've got a good everything on the outside.
22:51
But they are soul murderers.
22:57
What Bundy did in ravishing the body and destroying the body, the false prophet does in ravishing the soul and destroying the soul.
23:08
So you come to me and you tell me false teachers are OK.
23:12
I'm gonna tell you you're wrong.
23:14
Emphatically wrong.
23:16
We will not agree to disagree.
23:17
You are wrong.
23:24
Do you know what the punishment was in the Old Testament for false teachers? Do you know what it was? Oh, they took away their radio license.
23:32
They took away their domain name.
23:36
No, it was stoning.
23:40
Deuteronomy 13 tells us that a prophet couldn't be wrong at all.
23:47
And if he was wrong at all, he was stoned.
23:52
There's a very famous guy right now does a bunch of healing, swings his jacket at people.
23:55
Y'all know who he is.
23:57
Maybe.
23:59
But this guy back in the 90s.
24:03
He said God told him Fidel Castro was going to die in the 90s that during the 90s there was going to be a great revival in Cuba and communism was going to go and God was going to bring all this great revival.
24:13
Guess what? Fidel Castro.
24:14
I don't think he's dead yet.
24:16
He might be.
24:17
But I know he lived well into the 2000s.
24:23
What do people say about this guy? He's a prophet of God.
24:26
You can't speak about him.
24:30
Oh, no, no.
24:32
Don't bring me that garbage.
24:35
He taught falsely.
24:37
He said God gave him this word.
24:40
It was wrong.
24:41
And the Old Testament says we are no longer to fear him because he is a false prophet.
24:55
And it was so dangerous in the Old Testament, those people weren't even allowed to live.
24:58
Now, I'm not saying we go out and drag every false prophet out of every church and go have a stoning party.
25:02
Don't get me wrong.
25:06
We live under a different government now.
25:08
We are no longer under the theocracy of Israel.
25:09
And there is a difference in how we manage ourselves.
25:12
We manage ourselves in according with the laws of the land in which we live.
25:15
We don't go around stoning false teachers, but we also don't go around entertaining them either.
25:20
We don't go around giving them our ear and our time and our attention.
25:23
The only reason I listen to false teachers is what? To debunk and to rebuke.
25:36
Remember one time Mike came to the church before you became a member.
25:41
I'm going to use his example.
25:41
Hope you don't mind.
25:42
It's OK, because I'm already doing it.
25:45
He came to church for American Heritage Girls meeting.
25:48
And he was sitting down in what used to be my old office, which has my library in it.
25:53
And he told his wife, as she told my wife, he's got some crazy books on that shelf.
26:00
He has L.
26:01
Ron Hubbard's Dianetics on his shelf.
26:02
He's got he's got the Da Vinci Code on his shelf.
26:05
It's got nuts.
26:06
We could never go to church there.
26:09
I'm exaggerating a bit, but this is what I said.
26:11
I said, yeah, I do.
26:13
I do invest in ensuring that I know what these people have taught so that I can warn the flock.
26:22
I am the shepherd.
26:23
That is my job.
26:25
As one of the elders of the church, as the pastor of the church, it is my job to know what the sheep or the wolves in sheep's clothing look like and to know how they're hiding themselves so that I can tell you that what this person has said is wrong and why it's wrong.
26:42
And yes, I have a I have a very unique responsibility in doing that.
26:46
And next time I'm going to make sure I put on my little shelf cult section, make sure there's no surprise.
26:53
But that's the point, folks, is is we have to be diligent and discerning in what we're paying attention to.
27:00
We have to be where always proactively all the time watching out because they do exist.
27:07
They do exist and we have to be on guard for them.
27:11
Jesus wouldn't say beware if he didn't mean beware.
27:16
If it wasn't that big a deal, we wouldn't have whole books in the New Testament that are about this one subject.
27:25
So it's serious, right? It's serious.
27:29
So let's move on to the second thing.
27:31
Number one, as I already said, by saying beware, Jesus assures us that these people do exist.
27:35
That's number one.
27:37
Number two, by saying beware, Jesus assures us that objective truth does exist.
27:46
Objective truth does exist.
27:50
Now, what do I mean by that? Well, we have come to a time in history where if we say anyone is teaching anything falsely, we're called hypercritical.
28:03
We're called overly hard.
28:07
If we say anyone's teaching false.
28:11
Dr.
28:11
R.C.
28:11
Sproul said this, we live in a climate where heresy is embraced and proclaimed with the greatest of these, where our fathers saw these issues as matters of life and death, indeed of eternal life and death.
28:23
We have so surrendered to relativism and pluralism that we simply don't care about serious doctrinal error.
28:30
End quote.
28:30
We have given over to relativism.
28:33
We've given over to pluralism.
28:34
We've given over to the idea that the only heresy anymore is the preaching that there are heretics.
28:45
That's the only thing you can't say anymore is that there are people who are teaching heresy out there.
28:52
But we love it, there are taking notes, write this down.
28:59
Theological relativism is wrong.
29:04
What does that mean? Well, relativism is this.
29:07
If you're unfamiliar with it, relativism is what's true for you can be true for you and it can be true.
29:14
And what's true for me can be true for me and it be true.
29:18
And these two things contradict and yet still both be true.
29:22
That's relativistic morality.
29:25
You've heard people say, well, what's good for you doesn't have to be good for me if it's OK for me to sleep around.
29:29
It's OK for me to go out and get drunk.
29:31
It's OK for me to do crack or heroin or whatever else, because, hey, that's me.
29:35
And I think it's right.
29:37
There's no objective truth.
29:39
There's no objective standard.
29:40
I am the standard.
29:42
That's what relativism is.
29:45
And beloved, now in the church, more than ever, theological relativism has taken over.
29:52
And here's how it comes.
29:53
It comes in this little verbiage.
29:54
Well, I feel thus and so.
29:58
Who cares how you feel? The truth is the truth.
30:03
Somebody stands on top of a roof and says, I don't feel like gravity is going to hurt me.
30:06
And they take a step off and gravity is going to kick you in the pants because it doesn't care how you feel.
30:15
Objective truth is objective truth.
30:19
And Jesus, when he says beware of false teachers, he indicates to us in that by giving us the negative that there is a positive.
30:27
There's objective truth and there's objective falsehood.
30:34
John Stott, I'll quote him again in telling us to beware of false prophets.
30:40
Jesus made another assumption, namely that there is such a thing as an objective standard of truth from which the falsehood of the false prophets is to be extinguished.
30:49
The very notion of false prophets is meaningless otherwise.
30:54
End quote.
30:55
If there's no objective truth, there can't be a false prophet.
30:59
But because there is false prophets, that demands the fact that there is objective truth.
31:05
Truth exists.
31:07
People today, I don't know about this whole idea of you have the truth and you know, you can't think you're the only one who has the truth.
31:15
And that's just the argument.
31:18
And you think it's a new argument.
31:19
All these people, all this enlightened enlightenment stuff, think that they're so brilliant.
31:23
Pilate had the same issue.
31:26
Jesus said, I came to testify of the truth.
31:28
And Pilate looked at Jesus.
31:29
He said, truth, what is truth? What do you mean, truth? Relativism is not new.
31:35
It's just got a new name.
31:37
People have always felt themselves to be a truth unto themselves, a law unto themselves.
31:42
And Jesus said, no, there is an objective truth.
31:46
There is an objective standard.
31:49
But what is the standard of truth? Is it Keith Foskey? No, Keith Foskey is not the standard of truth.
31:57
And I want to warn you, don't ever think that I am not the standard of truth.
32:05
Neither are you.
32:09
The standard of truth is the word of God.
32:13
The answer of the question of what is the standard of truth, the answer.
32:18
This book is the measuring rod against all against which all truth must be measured.
32:26
And this is what's sometimes difficult, folks, because the false teachers will reference the Bible and their followers will say this.
32:35
Well, hey, they preach the scripture, man.
32:37
But in reality, what they do is they twist the word, they cherry pick the word, they flat out deny certain portions of the word.
32:49
And that's what they do.
32:51
And this has been going on since the beginning, 2 Peter 3, 15 and 16.
32:55
You may want to write this down.
32:56
2 Peter 3, 15 and 16.
32:58
I'm going to read the whole thing just so you can hear the end.
33:00
He says, and count the patience of our Lord is salvation.
33:03
Just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters.
33:13
There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do all the other scriptures.
33:26
So what is Peter saying? He's saying Paul wrote some really great things.
33:30
He has written scripture to you.
33:32
And yet there are people out there who twist it and there are people out there who they deny it.
33:38
And who are they? They're the ignorant and the unstable who do such a thing.
33:45
But who is to say who is twisting scripture? Well, by saying watch out for false teachers, by saying beware of false prophets, Jesus is assuming an objective standard for truth.
34:00
The word of God has an objective standard by which we can read it and understand it.
34:06
When we read the Bible in historical context and within the rules of grammar, that is the standard.
34:14
And the reality is false teachers do not read the Bible in context and they do not read in accordance with the rules of grammar.
34:21
It's very easy to pick out a false teacher's teaching.
34:24
They will pull verses out of context.
34:26
They'll pull verses out of the book that they're in and they'll apply them in so many different ways that have nothing to do with how they were written.
34:35
These guys don't preach verse by verse through the Bible.
34:38
They can't with any integrity because they're going to run into passages that absolutely deny what they teach.
34:45
They cannot preach in context because the Bible doesn't teach the nonsense they're spewing out.
34:50
They cannot preach the whole counsel of God because most of it disagrees with them.
34:56
Most of these guys have a pattern.
34:59
They preach the same eight sermons.
35:02
They just pull different verses out of context and they rotate.
35:07
They change the points a little bit, but it's the same message over and over and over.
35:11
Just rotate it through and they choose a passage.
35:17
They interpret it and they choose it.
35:19
That Lord led me to this.
35:22
I opened my Bible.
35:23
They play Lucky Dippy.
35:25
I opened my Bible.
35:26
I put my finger down.
35:27
I looked down and, oh, glory, there was the passage the Lord led me to.
35:32
And then I didn't study it.
35:35
Oh, no, because the Lord just let me get up here and speak and the Lord would give me my words.
35:49
The Bible says the heart is deceptive and a liar.
35:56
And I think about that every time I hear somebody says, I felt it in my heart to go here.
36:09
Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of the great preachers of the past, gives us seven signs of a false prophet.
36:23
I'll email them out this week.
36:25
I don't want anybody to try to write these down.
36:26
They're kind of long, but I want to give them to you.
36:28
So don't sit and try to scribble them all down.
36:32
Seven signs of a false prophet from Martin Lloyd-Jones.
36:36
Number one, the false prophet is always a very comforting preacher.
36:41
He gives the impression there's not much wrong, always comforting.
36:48
Number two, he is almost entirely absent of doctrine.
36:52
His messages are almost entirely absent of doctrine.
36:59
Number three, he rarely tells you anything about holiness, righteousness and the justice and wrath of God.
37:06
He always preaches about the love of God.
37:09
He does not say anything that's obviously wrong, but he refrains from saying things that are obviously right.
37:16
That one was kind of long, but it's the truth.
37:21
Number four, he never emphasizes the final judgment and the eternal destiny of the lost.
37:29
Number five, he does not emphasize the utter sinfulness of sin and the total inability of man to do anything about his own salvation.
37:41
Number six, his teaching does not emphasize repentance in any way.
37:49
This is the whole thing, that guy out in Texas.
37:52
I hear people all the time.
37:53
Well, he gives a gospel message at the end of his sermon every time.
37:56
No, he doesn't.
37:57
He is not.
37:58
The words repentance and the meaning thereof have not came out of those fancy teeth.
38:05
They haven't.
38:08
Number seven.
38:10
He offers an easy salvation and an easy type of life always, and he tells you not to examine your own soul.
38:22
I think I think I think Lloyd-Jones got it right.
38:27
But I want to add one because it's my prerogative to do so, because here's what I think to add to his seven.
38:37
And I think it simplifies it.
38:40
How do we know someone is a false prophet? If unbelievers love their message, if unbelievers love their message, because the Bible is clear.
38:54
First Corinthians chapter two tells us that the natural man cannot receive the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned.
39:02
Romans chapter eight tells us this.
39:04
And so if this person is filling stadiums with unbelievers who are saying yes, yes, yes, then he is not preaching the gospel.
39:17
If unbelievers, unsaved people, natural people can give you a thumbs up after they hear what you say, then you are not preaching the gospel because the Bible says that the cross is foolishness to them who are perishing.
39:37
We live in a day when false teachers are more available than ever.
39:43
And I'm going to draw to a conclusion now.
39:49
There was a time in history when it was hard to hear preaching, especially here in America.
39:55
It was such a big land and there were pastors who literally had to make circuits and they might only preach in one church every few weeks, sometimes every few months because they were circuiting through.
40:05
And there wasn't that many men of God to go around preaching unless the false teaching, while it was present, it wasn't as prevalent.
40:13
But now we have the radio.
40:18
Now we have the television that came along, you know, last century and so much false teaching began to fill the airways.
40:27
And in the modern day, 2014, anybody with just a little bit of Internet experience can build a website, promote a website that's filled to the brim with false teaching.
40:41
But you know what? It looks good and it looks nice.
40:48
There's never been a time in history wherein we need to be heeding the warning of the Lord more than today.
40:57
We need to be like the Bereans.
41:01
Who are the Bereans? The Bereans were a group of Jews in Act 17.
41:07
You see, the Apostle Paul would go out and preach and teach to the Jewish people and he would go in and he would reason with them in their synagogues.
41:15
And in Act 17, it says the Apostle Paul came to a group called a place called Berea.
41:21
And when he went in and taught, it says they search the scriptures daily to see if what the Apostle Paul told them was correct.
41:30
And it says they were more noble than the Jews of Thessalonica because they were willing to search the Bible to see if what Paul was saying was right.
41:45
That's the Apostle Paul, y'all.
41:47
No man is above scrutiny.
41:49
No man is above going to the word of God as his final authority.
41:53
And any man who tells you otherwise is already a false prophet.
41:58
The word of God is the standard and it must remain the standard.
42:01
And any man who cannot have his preaching held up to the word of God is not preaching what God has called us to preach.
42:08
And I plead with you today, I urge you today, do not allow yourself to be taken in by these false and dangerous people.
42:16
Do not allow yourself to be taken in by all of these people who are soul murderers, because that's what they are.
42:28
There are too many good people to listen to.
42:31
When you have a choice to listen to John MacArthur, to John Piper, to R.C.
42:38
Sproul, to all of these other guys, Al Mueller, when you have those people to listen to, then you should not ever have to turn on the garbage of this world.
42:48
There's too much good to spend any time in the evil.
42:53
Beware of false prophets.
42:58
Their desire is to murder the soul and they don't deserve you flirting with them.
43:10
Father, thank you for this time that we've had.
43:14
Thank you for this time to study your word.
43:22
Father, this is not a small thing.
43:25
These are not insignificant blips on the radar.
43:28
These are serious issues.
43:35
God, may it be.
43:37
That you so impress upon us to give our ears to good teachers and to shun the evil, the false prophets of this age.
43:49
Who only are there as agents of judgment and not a blessing.
44:01
Father, keep us from those people.
44:03
Keep us focused on the truth in Jesus name.
44:11
Amen.
44:12
Stand with us and.