Beware! Be Aware! Be in Christ’s Care!

 

Sermon for Trinity 8, July 25, 2021

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Matthew 7:15-23  ¹⁵Watch out for false prophets.  They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  ¹⁶By their fruit you will recognize them.  You do not gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, do you?  ¹⁷So then, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.  ¹⁸A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.  ¹⁹Every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  ²⁰So then, by their fruit you will recognize them.  ²¹Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  ²²Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and drive out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name?”  ²³Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers.” (EHV)

Beware!  Be Aware!  Be in Christ’s Care!

Dear friends in Christ.

          A few thousand years ago, a woman had a conversation with what she assumed was just one of God’s good creatures which she had seen in the Garden of Eden perhaps many times.  It would soon become apparent, though, that the serpent was not seeking her best interests.  Instead, by inhabiting that snake, the devil sought to destroy her along with every good thing God had created.  Sadly, Eve was not on guard against a creature using deception to destroy what God loved. 

In our sermon text, Jesus reminds us that we must constantly protect ourselves from those who would seek to lead us away from the salvation God has given us.  We must be watchful.  We must understand that the devil still seeks to deceive and devour those who are unaware.  We need a defender.  To summarize, one might say: Beware!  Be Aware!  Be in Christ’s Care!

Beware!  Jesus tells us, “Watch out!”  Essentially, we are to keep our distance from those who seek to deceive.  It is vitally important that we be continually on guard against any, and all, false prophets.  The Greek word is literally “pseudo-prophets:” counterfeit, fake, misleading, unreliable.  What these false teachers speak is something other than the saving Gospel we have in God’s Word. 

Jesus warned against those who “come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”  Sheep would naturally keep their distance from an obvious threat.  They would be too terrified to venture out of the protection of their sheep pen if there was a pack of growling wolves circling around it.  You and I are no different.  We wouldn’t be too interested in listening to the teachings of a raving madman who came in declaring that he hated God, or that God didn’t exist, or any other garbage that atheists and unbelievers boldly spout.  Of course, these obvious wolves are dangerous, and we need to avoid their teachings with all diligence, but the wolf in disguise can be infinitely more dangerous because he can catch us unaware, and this type of misleading foe can turn up anywhere.

One example is the wolf that comes in the disguise of a good friend.  It could be your spouse, a sibling, or a coworker who after getting to know you says, “Did God really say…?”  Or, “surely God doesn’t mean…”  And in that, the wolf mimics the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  It could even be a trusted fellow believer, who never in the world would conspire to mislead you yet does so when he himself is deceived on some doctrine.  It could be a preacher, even a very famous one.  Or, it could be you yourself—talking yourself out of following God’s pure Word when your own ideas, desires, and sins become too attractive to give up.  So, we must Beware! 

Jesus called false prophets “ravenous wolves.”  They will do anything to fill the cravings in their belly.  Spiritually, they seek something other than what God has written for us.  Whether willingly led or simply deceived and unaware, the wolf is trying to steal you away from God, because the spiritual predator is controlled by the devil in his constant jealous wickedness. 

You see, the devil is the ultimate predator.  He wants no one to be saved.  He wants to take the place of God, so he will use any means he can to steal you away from your Savior.  The devil will also use the spiritually starving, those who hunger for salvation but seek it in ways other than what the Bible teaches.  Beware!  There might be two different kinds of wolves, but the effect is the same.  The devil uses them to steal the Christian from Christ to kill for all eternity.

In this dangerous world, we must Beware!   We also need to Be Aware!  Jesus said, " By their fruit you will recognize them.  You do not gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, do you?”  Of course, we cannot find grapes on thornbushes and figs on thistles.  If we could, every farmer around would likely welcome those plants in his fields.  However, every plant on earth produces only what is natural for it to produce.  Thus, Jesus’ obvious conclusion: “So then, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.”  What He means is that we must be well acquainted with what God says in His Word, and while keeping our distance, be aware also of what the false teachers are spewing.

So, what is the good fruit we are to watch for?  Are we to watch for good deeds?  Are we to watch for those people who do nice things for others?  While good and useful in the world, those physical deeds do not necessarily prove that what is done is good in God’s eyes.  Even just quoting the Scriptures is not enough.  Jesus made that clear when he declared, “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven.”   Earthly good deeds can serve our fellow man but may also be part of the deception, so the good fruit Jesus seeks must be something different. 

To truly recognize this good fruit and the prophets who bear it, we must focus on God’s Word and know it well.  To Be Aware, we must be able to compare what is being said by the teacher, pastor, friend, brother, or spouse with what God’s Word really teaches.  We must be like the Bereans about whom Luke reported, “Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians.  They received the word very eagerly and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:11)  We need to know that the Bible centers on Christ and that salvation comes only through Jesus by faith in what He has done for us.

We need to do more than just escape catechism class through confirmation.  We must hear God’s Word more than on an occasional Sunday and maybe Christmas and Easter.  The devil is crafty and seeks to twist God’s Word for his own evil desires.   Yet, the devil can be discovered, and he can be defeated if we learn God’s Word and use it against him, just as Jesus did to repel Satan’s temptations. 

Now, each of us can admit that we don’t study the Scriptures enough.  Moses commanded God’s people to focus on His Word continually, saying, “These words that I am commanding you today are to be on your heart.  Teach them diligently to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)  In other words, God’s Word, and especially His gospel, is to be foremost in our minds, hearts, and actions continually, which means we all fall short of giving perfect attention to God’s Word.  

Thus, dear friends, on our own we don’t bear much fruit.  In fact, Jesus said that on our own we are not even able to produce good fruit. (John 15:4)  That would seem to indicate that we all are bad trees right along with the false prophets, and you heard Jesus’ warning about the bad trees, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  Left on our own, we would fall just like Eve who thought the fruit the chief false prophet offered her looked delightful and beneficial to eat, but Satan’s fruit was a poison that brought death to the world.  So, we need to Be Aware!  However, even more so, we need to Be in Christ’s Care! 

Though we fall short in our attention to what God desires for us, there is One who always produces only good fruit.  That One is Jesus.  Jesus came into this world to do His Father’s will in every way, shape, and form.  Thus, as Jesus warns against the false prophet, He says, “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  Jesus is that Only One who has merited His Father’s acceptance, so we need a connection with Him.

Jesus was ever attentive to God’s Word expressly for you and me.  Jesus lived His life in perfect fulfillment of the Law to fulfill all righteousness on our behalf, and then, continuing the love that brought His Son to earth, God punished Jesus for our sins.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God made him, who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”  (2 Corinthians 5:21)  To our modern sensibilities, that may sound unreal and so very unfair.  Yet, this “Great Exchange” gives us life in the kingdom of God. 

God sent Jesus to be our substitute, so God took our sins and charged them to Jesus, but in exchange, He also credits Jesus’ righteousness to you and me.  Thus, through faith in Jesus, our guilt is wiped away, and we are forgiven for all those times we have failed to obey, or to study God’s Word diligently, or when we inadvertently led someone astray, and when we failed to be on guard against the devil’s disguises, because through faith in Christ Jesus, we are counted righteous.

Be in Christ’s Care!  Jesus told His disciples, “I am the Vine; you are the branches.  The one who remains in me and I in him is the one who bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)  Only when we trust in Jesus for forgiveness and life can we bear good fruit.  Also though, while trusting in Jesus as our Savior, everything we do to serve our Lord and our neighbor is good fruit.  Grafted into the good vine of Jesus, we become good fruit bearers.  When we remain in God’s Word, and we remain trusting in Jesus as our Savior, we can’t help but produce good fruit because the Holy Spirit produces that good fruit in us.

The last portion of this sermon text gives us the Judgment Day lament of those false teachers.  Jesus said “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and drive out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers.’”  Some false teachers may even have imagined they were doing God’s will, but by substituting human ideas for God’s true Word, they produced poisonous fruit.  When they claim their own imperfect works are good enough to satisfy God, those works are worthless fruit in God’s judgment because they are not perfect, and they are not done out of faith in Christ.  Only that fruit which grows out of what Jesus has accomplished for us has the perfection necessary to please God.  Jesus’ perfect work is credited to those who trust in Him alone.  That is the theme that runs through the Bible from beginning to end: justification by faith in Jesus Christ, the One, True, Perfect, Son of God. 

Come Judgment Day, those who trust in their own ideas and their own works will hear Jesus final terrible command, “Depart from me, you evildoers.”  On the other hand, all who trust in Christ alone for forgiveness, salvation, and life will be commended for the good fruit they bore, because they will be credited with Jesus’ good and perfect obedience to God’s will.  Jesus tells us “By their fruit you will recognize them.”  Every person will be known by the faith he believes and confesses.   Trust in Jesus for your righteousness.  Then, for the rest of your life, Beware!  Be Aware!  Be in Christ’s Care!  Amen.

May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, both soul and body, be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.  Amen.