S.O.T.M. False Prophets [Matthew 7:15-20]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 7:15-20]

In verses 15 and 16, and to the end of this chapter, our Lord is concerned with just one great principle, one great message. He is emphasizing the importance of entering in at the narrow gate, and making quite certain that we are truly walking along the narrow way. In other words, it is a kind of enforcement of the message of verses 13 and 14. There He puts it in the form of an invitation or exhortation, that we are to enter in at this narrow gate, and to walk and to keep on walking that narrow way.

Here He elaborates that. He shows us some of the dangers, hindrances and obstacles that meet all who attempt to do that. But all along He keeps on emphasizing this vital principle, that the gospel is not just something to be listened to, or to be applauded, but ever to be applied. As James puts it, the danger is to look into the mirror, and immediately to forget what we have seen, instead of looking steadily into the mirror of that perfect law and remembering it and putting it into practice.

That is the theme our Lord continues to emphasize right until the end of the Sermon. First of all He puts it in the form of two particular dangers that confront us. He shows us how to recognize them and, having recognized them, how to deal with them. Then, having dealt with these two dangers, He winds up the argument, and the entire Sermon, by putting it in a plainly in terms of the picture of the two houses, the one built upon the rock and the other upon the sand.

But it is the same theme from beginning to end, and the thing that is common to the three divisions in the general statement is the warning about the fact of judgment. That, as we have seen, is the theme right through this seventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel and it is most important that we should realize that. It is the failure to grasp this that accounts for most of our troubles and problems. It accounts for the light and superficial evangelism that is far too common today. It accounts also for the lack of holiness and sanctified living that is true of most of us. It is not that we need special teaching about these things. What we all seem to be forgetting is that the whole time the eye of God is upon us, and that we are all moving steadily and certainly in the direction of the final judgment.

Our Lord reminds us again of these things, first of all by putting before us two special warnings. The first is this one about the false prophets. ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’ The picture which we should hold in our minds is something like this. Here we are standing outside this narrow gate. We have heard the Sermon, we have listened to the exhortation, and we are considering what to do about it.

‘Now,’ says our Lord in effect, ‘at that point one of the things you have to beware of is the danger of listening to false prophets. They are always there, they are always present, just outside that narrow gate. That is their favourite stand. If you start listening to them you are entirely undone, because they will persuade you not to enter in at the narrow gate and not to walk in the narrow way.’ They will try to persuade you from listening to what the Lord is saying. So there is always the danger of the false prophet who comes with his particular subtle temptation.

So the question that immediately arises for us is...

What is a false prophet?

How are they to be recognized? This is not as simple a question as it would appear to be. This is why our whole sermon is focused upon this main thought of what is a false prophet? In fact this may be one of the most important messages for our day because of the amount of content and teachers we have access to. With a great number of false teachers out there, how do I spot them?

Throughout church history there have been two main camps of thought of what a false prophet is. The first camp would say that this is a reference only to the teaching of the false prophet. The other camp would say it’s not a reference to the teaching but to the kind of life these people live. The problem with these two camps is not the camp itself, it’s the seclusion of each thought. i.e. I’d say both are right in a sense and both are wrong in a sense as well. This is not compromising I’m simply stating that one is not satisfactory to completely explain what a false prophet is.

You cannot say it’s just a matter of teaching because the wrong train of thought will inevitably affect your way of life and your way of life will inevitably affect your train of thought. Most Christians who have any discernment would be able to detect a heretic. If a man came into the pulpit doubtful about the being of God, denying the deity of Christ they would be spotted immediately…there’s not much difficulty in that, but you notice our Lord paints a different picture. Our Lord suggests it’s difficult to spot these false prophets, they look like a sheep, but are really wolves.

They look right no one really suspects anything wrong. The picture we need to have in our minds, therefore, should rather be this. The false prophet is a man who comes to us, and who at first has the appearance of being everything that could be desired. He is nice and pleasing and pleasant; he appears to be thoroughly Christian, and seems to say the right things. His teaching in general is quite all right and he uses many terms that should be used and employed by a true Christian teacher. He talks about God, he talks about Jesus Christ, he talks about the cross, he emphasizes the love of God, he seems to be saying everything that a Christian should say.

He is obviously in sheep’s clothing, and his way of living seems to correspond. So you do not suspect that there is anything wrong at all; there is nothing that at once attracts your attention or arouses your suspicion, nothing glaringly wrong. What then can be wrong, or may be wrong, with such a person? My suggestion is that finally this person may be wrong both in his teaching and in his type of life for, as we shall see, these two things are always linked together. Our Lord puts it by saying, ‘You shall know them by their fruits.’ The teaching and the life can never be separated, and where there is wrong teaching in any shape or form it always leads to a wrong type of life in some respect.

What is wrong with their teaching?

How can we describe these false prophets? The most convenient way of answering this, in keeping with the context of the sermon on the mount, is to say that there is no ‘narrow gate’ in it, there is no ‘narrow way’ in it. As far as it goes it is all right, but it does not include this. It is a teaching, the falseness of which is to be detected by what it does not say rather than by what it does say. And it is just at this point that we realize the subtlety of the situation. As we have already seen, any Christian can detect the man who says outrageously wrong things; but I’d say that the vast majority of Christians today do not seem to be able to detect the man who seems to say the right things but leaves out vital things? That’s why so many are deceived. We have somehow got hold of the idea that error is only that which is outrageously wrong; and we do not seem to understand that the most dangerous person of all is the one who does not emphasize the right things.

That is the only way to understand rightly this picture of the false prophets. The false prophet is a man who has no ‘narrow gate’ or ‘narrow way’ in his gospel. He has nothing which is offensive to the natural man; he pleases all. He is in ‘sheep’s clothing’, so attractive, so pleasant, so nice to look at. He has such a nice and comfortable and comforting message. He pleases everybody and everybody speaks well of him. He is never persecuted for his preaching, he is never criticized severely. He is praised by the Liberals and Modernists, he is praised by the Evangelicals, he is praised by everybody. He is all things to all men in that sense; there is no ‘narrow gate’ about him, there is no ‘narrow way’ in his message, there is none of ‘the offence of the cross’.

So, if that’s the description of the false prophet in general, what does it mean to say there is no narrow gate or narrow way in their message?

What does is mean to say there is nothing offensive in their preaching?

We can best answer this in terms of an Old Testament quotation. You remember how Peter argues in the second chapter of his second Epistle. He says, ‘There were false prophets also among the people (the children of Israel in the Old Testament), even as there shall be false teachers among you.’ So we must go back to the Old Testament and read what it says about the false prophets, because the type does not change.

They were always there, and every time a true prophet like Jeremiah or someone else came along, the false prophets were always there to question him, and to resist him, and to denounce and ridicule him. But what were they like? This is how they are described: ‘They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly (or lightly), saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.’ i.e.

The false prophet is always a very comforting preacher. As you listen to him he always gives you the impression that there is not very much wrong. He admits, of course, that there is a little wrong; he is not fool enough to say that there is nothing wrong. But he says that all is well and will be well. ‘Peace, peace,’ he says. ‘Don’t listen to a man like Jeremiah,’ he cries; ‘he is narrow-minded, he is a heresy hunter, he is non-cooperative. Don’t listen to him, it is all right.’ ‘Peace, peace.’ Healing ‘the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.’

And, as the Old Testament adds devastatingly and with such terrifying truth about religious people then and now, ‘my people like to have it so’. They love that message because it never disturbs and never makes you feel uncomfortable. You carry on as you are, you are all right, you do not have to worry about the narrow gate and the narrow way, or this particular doctrine or that. ‘Peace, peace.’ Very comforting, very reassuring always is the false prophet in his sheep’s clothing; always harmless and nice, always, invariably, attractive.

In what ways does it show in practice?

I suggest that it does so generally by an almost entire absence of doctrine as a whole in its message. He always talks vaguely and generally; he never gets down to particular doctrines. He does not like doctrinal preaching; it is always so vague. But someone may ask: ‘What do you mean by not being particular about doctrine, and where does the narrow gate and the narrow way come in?’

The answer is that the false prophet very rarely tells you anything about the holiness, the righteousness, the justice, and the wrath of God. He always preaches about the love of God, but those other things he does not mention, holiness, righteousness, justice, wrath of God. He never makes anyone tremble as he thinks of this holy and mighty God in whom we serve. He does not say that he does not believe these truths. No; that is not the difficulty. The difficulty with him is that he says nothing about them. He just does not mention them at all.

He generally emphasizes one truth about God only, and that is love. He does not mention the other truths that are equally prominent in the Scriptures; and that is where the danger lies. He does not say things that are obviously wrong, but he refrains from saying things that are obviously right and true. And that is why he is a false prophet. To conceal the truth is as reprehensible as to proclaim an utter heresy; and that is why the effect of such teaching is that of a ‘ravening wolf’. It is so pleasing, but it can lead men to destruction because it has never confronted them with the holiness and the righteousness and the justice and the wrath of God.

Another doctrine which the false prophet never emphasizes is that of the final judgment and the eternal destiny of the lost. There has not been much preaching about the Last Judgment in the last fifty years, and very little preaching about hell and the ‘everlasting destruction’ of the wicked. No, the false prophets do not like teaching such as you have in the second Epistle of Peter.

They have tried to deny its authenticity because it does not fit in with their doctrine. They say that such a chapter should not be in the Bible. It is so strong, it is so blasting; and yet there it is. And it is not an isolated case. There are others. Read the Epistle of Jude, read the so-called gentle apostle of love, the apostle John, in his first Epistle, and you will find the same thing. But it is here also in this Sermon on the Mount. It comes out of the mouth of our Lord Himself. It is He who talks about the false prophets in sheep’s clothing that are ravening wolves; it is He who describes them as rotten, evil trees. He deals with the judgment in exactly the same way as did Paul when he preached to Felix and Drusilla of ‘righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come’.

In the same way the false prophet’s teaching does not emphasize the utter sinfulness of sin and the total inability of man to do anything about his own salvation. It often does not really believe in sin at all, and certainly does not emphasize sins vile nature. It does not say that we are all perfect; but it does suggest that sin is not serious. Indeed, it does not like to talk about sin; and if it does it talks only about individual or particular sins. It does not talk about the fallen nature, or say that man himself in his totality is fallen, lost and depraved.

It does not like to talk about the depravity of the whole of mankind in sin, and the fact that we have ‘all sinned and come short of the glory of God’. It does not emphasize this doctrine of the ‘exceeding sinfulness of sin’ as you find it in the New Testament. And it does not emphasize the fact that man is ‘dead in trespasses and sins’, and utterly helpless and hopeless. It does not like that; it does not see the necessity of doing that. What I am emphasizing is that the false prophet does not say these things, so that an innocent believer listening to him assumes that he believes them. The question that arises concerning such teachers is, do they believe these things? The answer, obviously, is that they do not, otherwise they would feel compelled to preach and to teach them.

So, if the depravity of man and the complete inability of man to save themselves isn’t a big deal to the false prophet then what about the atonement, and the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The false prophet talks about ‘Jesus’; he even delights to talk about the cross and the death of Jesus. But the vital question is, What is his view of that death?

What is his view of the cross?

There are views being taught today which are utterly heretical and a denial of the Christian faith. The one test is this: Does he realize that Christ died on the cross because it was the only way to make propitiation [substitution] for sin? Does he really believe that Christ was there crucified as a substitute for him, that He was bearing ‘in his own body on the tree’ his guilt and the punishment of his guilt and sin? Does he believe that if God had not punished his sin there in the body of Christ on the cross, that God could not have forgiven him?

Does he believe that it was only by setting forth His own Son as a propitiation for our sins on the cross that God could be ‘just, and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus’ (Romans 3:25, 26)? Merely to talk about Christ and the cross is not enough. Is it the biblical doctrine of the substitutionary penal atonement? That is the way to test the false prophet. The false prophet does not say these things. He talks around the cross.

He talks about the people round the cross and sentimentalizes about our Lord on the cross. He does not know anything about Paul’s ‘offence of the cross’. His preaching of the cross is not ‘foolishness to the Greeks’, it is not a ‘stumbling block to the Jew’. He has made the cross ‘of none effect through his philosophy’. He has made it a rather beautiful thing, a wonderful philosophy of love and heart-break because of a world that is not interested. He has never seen it as a tremendous, holy transaction between the Father and the Son in which the Father has ‘made’ the Son to be ‘sin for us’, and has laid our iniquity upon Him. There is none of that in his preaching and teaching, and that is why it is false.

In the same way it does not emphasize repentance in any real sense. It has a very wide gate leading to salvation and a very broad way leading to heaven. You need not feel much of your own sinfulness; you need not be aware of the blackness of your own heart. You just ‘decide for Christ’ and you rush in with the crowd, and your name is put down, and is one of the large number of ‘decisions’ reported by the press.

It is entirely unlike the evangelism of the Puritans and of John Wesley, George Whitefield and others, which led men to be terrified of the judgment of God, and to have an agony of soul sometimes for days and weeks and months. John Bunyan tells us in his book ‘Grace Abounding’ that he endured an agony of repentance for eighteen months. There does not seem to be much room for that today.

Repentance means that you realize that you are a guilty, vile sinner in the presence of God, that you deserve the wrath and punishment of God, that you are hell-bound with out Christ. It means that, because of the H.S., you begin to realize that this thing called sin is in you, that you long to get rid of it, and that you turn your back on it in every shape and form. You renounce the world whatever the cost, the world in its mind and outlook as well as its practice, and you deny yourself, and take up the cross and go after Christ.

Your nearest and dearest, and the whole world, may call you a fool, or say you have religious mania. You may have to suffer financially, but it makes no difference. That is repentance. The false prophet does not put it like that. He heals ‘the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly’, simply saying that it is all right, and that you have but to ‘look at Jesus’, or ‘become a Christian’ and every thing will be just fine.

The false teaching is not interested in true holiness, in biblical holiness. It holds on to an idea of holiness such as the Pharisees had. You remember that they picked out certain sins of which they were not guilty themselves, as they thought, and said that as long as you were not guilty of those you were all right. Oh, how many Pharisees there are today!

Holiness has just become a question of not doing three or four things. We no longer think of it in terms of ‘love not the world, neither the things that are in the world … the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ (1 John 2:15, 16). ‘The pride of life’ is one of the greatest curses in the Christian Church. The false teaching desires a holiness like that of the Pharisees. It is just a question of not doing certain things that we ourselves have agreed upon because they do not happen to appeal to us in particular. Thus we have reduced holiness into something that is easy, and we crowd into that broad way and try to practise it. That’s easy believe-ism.

Those are some of the characteristics of these false prophets that come to us in sheep’s clothing. They offer an easy salvation, and an easy type of life always. They discourage self-examination; indeed, they almost feel that to examine oneself is heresy. They tell you not to examine your own soul. You must always ‘look to Jesus’, and never at yourself, that you may discover your sin. They discourage what the Bible encourages us to do, to ‘examine’ ourselves, to ‘prove our own selves’, and to face this last section of the Sermon on the Mount.

They dislike the process of self-examination and mortification of sin as taught by the Puritans, and those great leaders of the eighteenth century— Whitefield and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, who were great men of faith yet test themselves constantly. It does not believe in that, for that is uncomfortable. It is an easy salvation and easy Christian living.

It knows nothing about Paul’s feeling, when he says ‘we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened’. It does not know anything about fighting ‘the good fight of faith’. It does not know what Paul means when he says that ‘we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’ (Ephesians 6:12). It does not understand that. It does not see any need for the whole armour of God, because it has not seen the problem. It is all so easy.

I was asked not that long ago by someone, “why has the Christian Church today become so weak and ineffective?” I didn’t hesitate to answer, “I believe largely due to the type of weak easy non-doctrinal filled preaching that has come from many of our pulpits.” They still talk about God; they still talk about Jesus; they still talk about His death on the cross. They do not stand out as obvious heretics; but they do not say those other things that are vital to salvation and true sanctification. They give this vague message that never upsets anybody. They are so pleasant and ‘modern’ and up to date. They’re message is pleasing to the palate, and the result is churches empty of power and poor Christian living.

You may be thinking, “pastor you certainly didn’t please our palate this morning.” I know, but I’ve tried to be honest and hold to the clear teaching of scripture this morning. It certainly would be much easier for me to preach a more comfortable message and less in your face…but that would not do anyone any good. The gospel is too glorious not to be preached in it’s completeness. So my prayer is this morning that, if anything, this message has helped you and will be a help to you in the future to spot false teachers. As well as to encourage you to test everything you hear preached to you against the scriptures. And to examine yourself constantly to make sure you have entered that narrow gate and are on that narrow path.