The Shepherd is determined to keep you safe from the wolves

Sermon for Trinity 8

Romans 8:12-17  +  Matthew 7:15-23

You know Jesus as the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. He once spoke of the hirelings who see the wolf coming and abandon the sheep, because they don’t care about the sheep. But He didn’t abandon His sheep. He saw the wolf coming and allowed Himself to be killed so that His sheep might be safe, so that people might hear the good news of the payment He made for our sins on the cross, that we might repent of our sins, and believe in Him, and have eternal life in His heavenly pastures.

But we won’t have that eternal life if we don’t make it all the way to the end of our lives still knowing Him, still trusting in Him, still living in the safety of His holy Christian Church. And, the fact is, we have enemies who would drag us out of His Church. And the worst part is, these enemies appear to be members of the Church.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, the Shepherd, speaks of the wolf again—the wolves that threaten to devour His sheep so that we don’t make it safely to the end. So our Shepherd steps forward to warn us. Unfortunately, it’s a warning that very few Christians take seriously. Because these wolves don’t look so scary. These wolves don’t have fangs or claws. They don’t look like wolves at all. They look like innocent, sensible, inspiring people—people who make a lot of sense, people who say things about God that sound good, that sound right. The hardest part, as I said a moment ago, is that they look like Christians. But you, Christians, pay attention to what the Good Shepherd tells you in today’s Gospel. Because the Lord is determined to keep you safe from these wolves, too.

In this case, He keeps you safe from the wolves by giving you a much-needed warning, which you are to follow throughout your earthly life: Watch out for false prophets. What is a prophet? It’s literally anyone who claims to speak for God, or to teach you something about God. And a false prophet is someone whom God has not sent to speak for Him, or who teaches you things about God that are not true. Now, many prophets have gone out into the world—Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs (like the woman whom the RNC invited onto the stage this past week to teach people about her god). But these aren’t the wolves Jesus is warning His people about. He doesn’t need to. Christians know better (or should know better) than to listen to prophets who aren’t even Christian. No, the ones Jesus is warning about come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. In other words, these are the ones who pretend to come in the name of Jesus, seemingly innocent, harmless, often having prestigious titles or distinguished offices in the Church. These are the ones you really have to watch out for, because they present themselves as ministers of Christ.

So, Jesus says, watch out for false ones, for ministers who are actually wolves. And, as Jesus describes in the last verses of our Gospel, they may not even know that they’re wolves who are tearing people to pieces with their teaching. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, in your name did we not prophesy? And in your name did we not cast out demons? And in your name did we not perform many miracles?’ And then I will confess to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness!’” So being a false prophet isn’t necessarily an intentional thing. Many of them are perfectly sincere in what they preach, thinking they’re serving the Lord Jesus, thinking He’ll be welcoming them into heaven one day. But they’ll learn the hard way that what they preached, or what they practiced, was not what God the Father wanted them to preach or practice.

So how does one recognize a false prophet, if he looks and sounds so much like a true prophet? What are you supposed to look for? By their fruits you will know them, Jesus says. So whenever anyone, especially a minister, comes around claiming to speak for God, or trying to teach you about God, you have some work to do, if you would be faithful to the Lord Jesus. You have to examine their fruit.

First of all, if you’re looking for grapes, you don’t go looking among the thorn bushes. If you’re looking for figs, you don’t go looking in a patch of thistles. No, you go to vines that you know to be grape vines or to the tree that you know to be a fig tree. Likewise, if you’re looking for solid Christian preaching and teaching, for a prophet whom Jesus had sent to speak in His name, then you shouldn’t go looking outside the ministry of the Christian Church. You shouldn’t go looking to someone who got up one day and said, “I feel called by God to be a prophet (or a pastor or a minister).” You shouldn’t trust in someone who came along and said, “I found a Bible! Let me teach you what I’ve learned!” These are all the Glenn Becks of the world, the self-appointed radio prophets or TV evangelists or best-selling authors, or any woman who claims to be a pastor. They may also include any number of self-appointed ministers in those Christian churches that don’t even claim any relationship with the ministry established by Christ through His apostles. You don’t turn to such sources at all if you’re looking for the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. No, you go to the Christian Church and to the ministers who have been rightly called to the office of the preaching ministry.

But, obviously, you’re not done yet. Having approached the right kind of tree, an actual called and ordained minister of the Christian Church, now you have to examine the fruit from each one of those trees, to determine if it’s good or bad. And, just like with a piece of fruit, you can’t always tell just by looking at the outside. You have to cut it open and look at the whole thing on the inside. Now, obviously you don’t cut the minister open. But you have to investigate both what he teaches and what he practices. As the apostle John wrote in his first epistle, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. You examine the fruit, you test the spirits by examining their teaching in the light of the Holy Spirit’s inspired Scriptures. This is what the people in the little town of Berea did when the Apostle Paul first came to them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jews in the synagogue listened to Paul’s preaching, and it rang true with them. But they didn’t just accept it or reject it. They searched the Scriptures daily, to see if what Paul was saying was true.

So you compare the whole teaching of a minister with the words of Holy Scripture. But even then, you have to be careful, because the Scriptures can be abused. The devil himself was able to quote from the Bible in his futile attempt to lead Jesus astray. And many, many people pull passages of Scripture out of context still today. So you have to know the Scriptures well enough to pull together the whole message of God and use it to evaluate a preacher’s preaching, to see if it’s true or not.

How true does a preacher’s preaching have to be? Or to turn it around, how much false doctrine does he have to teach in order to be recognized as a false prophet? Well, that depends. How much poison is it safe to consume? How much gangrene can you tolerate on your body? How highly do you value God Himself? Because, contrary to what many false prophets will tell you, God cannot be separated from His Word and from the teaching of it. As He said through the prophet Isaiah, This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word. And as Jesus said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. And you remember what He added to His command to baptize? Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. Nowhere does God tell His people, “Just focus on My main teachings, and don’t worry about the rest of My doctrine.” Nowhere does God tell His people, “Doctrine doesn’t matter.”

And so the apostle Paul warns the Christians in Rome, Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. Or, as Jesus simply put it, watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

This is why, after avoiding all the non-ministers in the world and their teaching, and then, after carefully evaluating the fruit of the other Christian churches in the world, and then, after carefully evaluating the doctrine that is proclaimed from this pulpit and taught by this minister, most of you here today have determined to attend here and to become and remain members here, to receive the ministry of God’s Word in this place, in obedience to both of Christ’s commands: to watch out for and to avoid false prophets, and to consume the fruit that you’ve determined to be good. I say that with humility, because, to produce good fruit in the teaching of God’s Word is a daunting task, an impossible one, really, without the continual aid of the Holy Spirit. And to recognize the good fruit of a spiritual tree also requires the Spirit’s help. But, in the end, we have determined that the Mormon prophets are false prophets, along with the Calvinist (Reformed) prophets, along with the Baptist prophets, and the papal prophets, and the Pentecostal prophets, and the Methodist prophets, and many Lutheran prophets as well. Again, I say all this with humility, but also with conviction, with the conviction that the ancient Creeds of the Christian Church are true, and with the conviction that the Confessions of the Lutheran Church are also true, and trustworthy aids in evaluating a prophet’s preaching.

But even with that, our job isn’t done yet, neither your job nor mine. It’s never done this side of heaven. Because the Lord Jesus knew that there would always be false prophets, going forth in His name but never sent by Him. He told us that, leading up to His second coming, there would be very many false prophets who would deceive many, and that’s precisely why there are so many different kinds of churches out there, because there are many false prophets, and because there are few who take seriously Jesus’ command to watch out for them.

But the Lord is determined to keep you safe from all the wolves, including the wolves masquerading as sheep, and as prophets who speak for God. By issuing the warning in today’s Gospel and seeing to it that His Holy Spirit had it recorded in Holy Scripture for us, and again seeing to it that His words are preached in your midst, He is carrying out His task as the Good Shepherd, warning you, guarding you, guiding you. Now you, as sheep of the Good Shepherd, keep putting into practice His warning to watch out. Use the Scriptures at your disposal. Use the ministry at your disposal. And trust that, as you seek to obey the word of Jesus in today’s Gospel, the Good Shepherd will use that very word to keep you safe from the wolves. Amen.