Dealing with False Prophets
Notes
Transcript
Page 776, between Jonah and Nahum.
Our text for this morning begins by describing false prophets. False prophets commonly arose throughout the history of Israel, and throughout the history of the church. Moses writes concerning false prophets, and he even gives the manner of determining who is false prophet is. The law given to Moses, from God, specifically identifies that there are no mulligans for false prophets. The margin of error is 0. If a false prophet presumes to speak on behalf of God, and that doesn’t come true they are to be put to death.
This was an issue that really came to light in 2020. When some “preachers and teachers” were prophesying concerning the end of covid, or the return of Christ. Or our political prophets who continue to prophesy the end of the warn by means of climate change.
However, the Mosaic law’s condemnation of false prophecy did not deter people from this completely.
In Addition to Moses and Micah - Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Elisha, Jeremiah, as well as others all dealt with false prophets.
The false prophets that Micah is dealing with, we have already seen in chapter 2, they are telling people exactly the opposite of what Micah is saying. It is as if they are approaching prophesy as if it is just the power of positive thinking rather than speaking from God.
When we are referring to false prophesy we are not simply referring to someone who has attempted to tell the future and gotten it wrong. While the annual predictions of the date for the return of Christ are part of this - it is not all of this. False prophesy refers to anyone who presumes to speak on behalf of God and is not actually speaking on behalf of God.
So if Micah says “there will be a famine.”
They would say instead “No! There will be a surplus of food.”
The issue was not that they were prophesying, but rather that they were prophesying falsely.
Now, as a reminder, prophets are not merely those who are responsible for telling of future events. But for speaking the words of God to the people of God. Sometimes this involved a telling of events to come, as we see in this book, but as we will see in Micah’s defense in verse 8, he identifies his primary task as declaring sin.
Some scholars have suggested that they may didn’t have a nefarious intent, but simply thought if they spoke good thoughts into the air they would come to pass. The problem with that idea is that they are speaking as if they are spokesmen’s of God. Whether they had good intentions or not is irrelevant.
Anytime someone promises that God has spoken something that he has not spoken that is false prophesy.
Deuteronomy 18 gives us a definition for false prophets. Anyone who presumes to speak a word in the name of God that he has not commanded him to speak.
20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.
This morning we will focus on Micah 3:5-8.
This text deals with:
The False Peace Prophets,
How God Deals with These False Prophets
The Source of Micah’s Ministry
And then we’ll wrap up by touching on how we continue to role of prophet today
The False Peace Prophets
5 Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths.
In verse 5 Micah returns to these “Peace Prophets” that he spoke of in chapter 2.
They silenced Micah from preaching of the coming wrath of God, and responded with “One should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us.” And their message will continue later in chapter 3 with “Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us,” in verse 11.
What they are doing is preaching the opposite message of what Micah is preaching. Where Micah is preaching that “judgment is coming” but these hippy prophets are instead just preaching “Peace man!” Now joking aside, this is preaching peace with God, which means peace from war… but there is not a promise of peace. We also see this in Jeremiah, as well.
But they aren’t just hippies…
They are Hangry Hippies…
Do you know what Hangry means? When you’re so hungry that you’re angry. That is the motivation of these prophets. Later in the text, in verse 11, Micah speaks of the prophets practicing divination for money. They are swayed by food and money. They are easily bought. Fill their belly and their bank account and you’re on their good side. But deny them food, and they shift their message to be against you.
They cry peace when they have food, but when they are hungry they declare war. Their prophesies are shifted by their bellies and their bank account.
The manner in how the prophets are acting here, is quite similar to what Balak the King of Moab wanted of the prophet Balaam in Numbers 22. Balak thought that if had he paid Balaam, he could control Balaam’s message, and thus sway what God is doing. Control the prophet, control the Lord. But not only is that not how the Lord works, it’s also not how the truth works.
And that’s exactly what Balaam tells Balak, I can only say what the Lord tells me to say. Which is why Balaam ends up blessing Israel even through Balak paid him to curse Israel, and why Balak in the end up cursed rather than blessed.
And yet Balaam is hardly a shining example of a good prophet since he himself is complicit in a plot to throw the nation of Israel into idolatry and adultery.
God’s message doesn’t change because the prophet has a good or bad day.
How God Deals with False Prophets
Verses 6-7
6 Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without divination. The sun shall go down on the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; 7 the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.
And then in verses 6 and 7, Micah relays to these peace prophets the judgment that God will pour out on them.
The key to the judgement that is being pronounced here is darkness, and blindness.
They will have no vision - for a prophet this is an issue. They have nothing that they can see. Even in whatever manner their divination worked - whether natural, demonic, or by God’s grace it will be cut off.
Commentator T. Desmond Alexander stated that “their crystal balls will become black.”
Not only will they be cut off from their spiritual illumination, but they will also be disgraced. They will be like lepers.
And we once again hear that their will be no answer from God.
Their judgment and their punishment for their wickedness. For their taking advantage of widows, for their distortions of the word of God - is that God will be silent.
8 But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.
Micah here gives the source his ministry and the subject of his ministry.
The source of his ministry is the Holy Spirit. He is filled with power, and with the Holy Spirit. He does not come with speculation, or by reading tea leaves, tarot cards, or constellations.
And the subject of Micah’s ministry is to point out and reveal sin.
In verse 8, Micah is defending his own prophetic ministry. In contrast to you who speak without the Spirit, Micah is asserting that he is filled with power, he is filled with the Spirit of the Lord.
These are Micah’s credentials. He is not swayed by emotion, nor is he swayed by his belly. He is guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. We look at the Word of God, the Bible, with the same understanding. The men who penned the words in this book were filled with the Holy Spirit. They wrote in their personalities and experienced as they communicated that which the Holy Spirit inspired in them. The same Spirit that has filled Micah in his ministry, filled Moses… Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude when they penned the Holy Scriptures.
But even greater than Micah, Isaiah, and anyone else who has filled the role of prophet is Christ Jesus. He is our great prophet. He proclaims the Word of God, in the Spirit.
Earlier I read from Deuteronomy 18:20-22 concerning the warning to a false prophet. However, just a few verse before that Moses wrote this:
18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.
Jesus is the prophet like Moses.
The double edge sword that comes from out of his mouth in Revelation 1:16 is the Word of God. He came to deal with sin. But unlike the other prophets, Jesus did not merely come to point sin, and to tell people to repent. But Jesus also came to fix our relationship problem with God. Our sins made it so that we are separated from him - but through Christ your sins can be forgiven - my sins can be forgiven. Because Jesus did not merely point out the problem of sin, he did something about it. He offered up his life as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.
The only way we can be forgiven of our sins, and be brought back to the father, is by faith in Jesus. By believing that Jesus is Lord, and God raised him from the dead.
After Jesus rose from the dead on that first Lord’s Day, he then spent 40 days appearing to many - and then he ascended into heaven… and when he did he sent the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that filled Micah, the same Spirit that rested upon Jesus at his baptism and confirmed Jesus’ ministry.
That same Spirit been given to Jesus’ people, filled them, that they might do the work of ministry. The work of pointing out and revealing sin, is the same work that the Holy Spirit is doing in the church today.
Many of us likely think that the office of prophet as something of the Old Testament, that finds it’s culmination in Christ. So we might mistakenly think the work of the prophet no longer continues. While we generally don’t label people as prophets today - at least not in Baptist churches… there are several roles that overlap with the role of prophet… and they are much more common than you might think.
The office of the pastor has a prophetic nature to it. Now by this I do not mean that my role is to tell of future events. But as Micah has done, and as Christ has done, to proclaim the word of God, and to call out sin.
Like Micah, and like Christ, the prophetic voice of the pastor is one that looks at the church and looks at the culture and is willing to call sin sin. The pastor cannot be afraid to say that fornication is sin, or that your really need to stop talking about other people in gossip, or that as a husband you need to love your wive as Christ loved the church, and wives you ought to submit to your husbands as the church submits to Christ. And the more we look at the Scriptures and compare the culture that can be harder to do…
It’s not necessarily easy to look at the culture and proclaim that marriage is designed by God to be between a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman. And that God has specifically designed men and women differently. Men can’t get pregnant and women can’t grow beards. Life begin at conception, and men should protect women and children.
But it is more important to stand firm on the word of God, than to please the culture.
Just as the office of pastor has a prophetic voice, so do many pastors continue on the role of false pastor.
One way that a pastor might fail to observe the role of prophet is to ignore the Word of God. To preach on pop culture, feel good messages that are ultimately empty, basic moralism that is lightly tied to the Bible, or even the tendency that many pastors fall into where they tell a series of self glorifying stories that are loosely connected by out of context bible verses. When they depart from preaching the word of God - it is normally long after they have departed from
any willingness to call out sin and transgression. It starts with the assertion that people don’t want to hear that, it starts with the
And to demonstrate how that sin is a separation between man and God, and the only way back to God is through Christ Jesus.
Many false prophets pastors, are satisfied to preach happy sermons that make the audience feel good rather than preaching biblical Christianity. They are much more familiar with what could be known as moral therapeutic deism rather than
This week, I received a call to participate in an “interfaith worship service”, while I appreciate the invite, I was aware by the name on the caller ID when I picked up the phone that I was receiving a call from someone who believes a different gospel… not that there is a different gospel, but a false gospel, that comes from a false prophet.
However, I also want to add that the pastor isn’t the only role that should carry on the office of prophet… but so is the role of the father or husband. The man as the head of the family should be the spiritual head. And thus point out sin, urge repentance, and lead his family in the reading of scripture.
And the roles of prophet, pastor, husband and father all face the same temptation. The temptation to fail to properly do your job because the people, the congregation, your wife, your kids, wont like the message. Or you simply want to maintain the peace - you worry - that if you finally begin to lead your home according to the manner the Bible prescribes then your wife might question you and you don’t want to deal with that. You worry that your kids wont listen. Or even worse… you just don’t want to.
Though this text finds it’s fulfillment in the events of the Assyrian takeover of Israel in 722, and the Babylonian Captivity of 586 - some of the cautions still remain today. One of the biggest issues that we have in America is that the roles that have an inherent prophetic aspect to them have been diminished, ignored or abandoned.
Husbands and fathers have become weak. Pastors have become cowards.
And to those in those roles, I would urge you to stand firm on the Scriptures. Speak boldly, and unashamedly about the things that Scripture guides us in - and when the world wants to silence you on those issues - speak louder.
How do we deal with false prophets… we preach a better message. We preach the whole counsel of God. We point out sin, not to put others down or to make people feel less than - but so that we can point to a great savior who has more mercy in him than sin in us.
