Kingdom Life: Beware Of False Prophets (Matthew 7:15-20)
Beware of False Prophets
Matthew 7:15–20 | Light House Church
The Text
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
Where We Are
We're right at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has concluded the body of his teaching on what kingdom life is like, and now comes the final exhortation: walk in his will, obey his commands, do as he said. And there is eternity on the line. There is life or death here.
He gives us a series of images, and they all make the same point.
Two roads. Last week Dale showed us — one easy, one hard.
Two trees. That's today. A healthy tree, a diseased tree. Good fruit, bad fruit.
Two confessions. The genuine and the false — the one Jesus knows, and the one he never knew.
Two houses. Rock and sand.
Every one of these is saying the same thing: it is not the word of your mouth that finally matters to the Lord. It is not a confession, ultimately. It is that your confession is matched by a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Your faith is proven by your works.
Two Ditches
Dale talked about two ditches with this sermon.
The first says the Sermon on the Mount simply highlights how impossible God's law is and how much we need his grace — and that's the end of the story. We could never actually live this way, so we lean hard into grace and stop there.
The second moves toward legalism: no, you have to be perfect — and it quietly abandons the need for Jesus.
But both halves are true here. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exposes the sin of our hearts and says it is only possible through him — and then he actually empowers us to a new way of life. That is the whole purpose of his coming: to expose our sin, and then to redeem us. To redeem us so that we can live out the law, live out his heart of love, God's heart.
That's what the Sermon on the Mount has been about. What will God's kingdom people be like? They will be people deeply dependent on Jesus, who walk in the way of the Spirit, who look like Jesus to the world — light and salt. But if we fail to walk in the path of Jesus, we lose our salt. We lose our light. We no longer look like the kingdom of God. We no longer look like heaven.
I've been impressed this week that Jesus lays down for us the words of eternal life. Grab onto that for a moment. Everything he sets before us — even the hard commands, even beware of false prophets — these commands come to us because Jesus is the best.
Doug, what's the line you always say? "It's all about Jesus, and everything else is stupid."
That's right. Jesus is eternal life. Jesus is everything we need. And anything that would pull us away from him is legitimately stupid — it is leading us away from our life. Jesus has the words of eternal life. Anything else is a path of destruction.
The Path Was Never Easy
Back up for a second. Dale reminded us last week that there are two paths. One is easy — that's the way of the world. The other is hard; the gate is narrow and the way is difficult. It is not easy to follow Jesus.
Jesus said this from the very beginning of the sermon. Look back at chapter 5, verses 17–20 — this is the front bookend around the law:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Is that a hard path or an easy path? There is nothing easy about it. You may not relax one of the least of these commandments. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. That is the path Jesus has called us to.
And remember what the law of God was always for. It was meant to expand his rule and reign on the earth. Those who lived according to it, who obeyed it, would bring life to the world. But what the law exposed is that nobody could keep it. Our sinful hearts missed the heart of the law — even those fighting to obey it to the letter were missing the heart of it. That's why he had to come. He came to redeem us from the curse of the law, because we were all disobedient to it, and to restore to us the ability to actually walk it out — to walk out the law of love in the power of the Spirit.
Everybody say it: in the power of the Spirit.
That's what he came to do — to help us fulfill the law.
So this morning we're dealing with a flesh reality that wants the easy path, and also an outside reality — a world that calls us onto the evil path. The world, the flesh, and the devil: a trifecta of enemies coming at us to pull us off the path of life. The flesh says, I want the easy path. And then the world and the devil come alongside and say, Come on over. It's fine for you to be on the easy path. That's what we're pressing into today.
Beware
Look at verse 15. Beware of false prophets.
Kids, have you ever seen a warning sign? Do you know what a warning is, Noah? It means watch out. There's something dangerous here.
That's exactly what Jesus is doing. He is throwing up a big sign: Whoa. Watch out, kingdom people. There is a serious problem ahead. And what is the thing you need to watch out for? False prophets.
Because they look like sheep on the outside, and inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
I want to remind you today that we face many ravenous wolves in our day-to-day life. We hear them from the world — but not just the world. Also within the church, and primarily within the church. People who claim the name of Jesus. People who are sometimes in our tribes, in our circles, who are wolves. They look like sheep, and they teach in a way that leads you away from the path of life. Jesus says: watch out for them. This was not just for the disciples then. This is for us today.
So my burden this morning is simply that we would not leave the path of Jesus. That we would never veer away. We're going to wrestle a lot with what those false teachings look like — but hear this first: beware. They exist today, all around us.
The Wolves in Ezekiel
Jesus, I think, is alluding to Ezekiel, where false prophets are indicted for eating up God's people with their lies:
Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain… And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, "Thus says the Lord God," when the Lord has not spoken.
The princes and the prophets weren't necessarily killing the sheep. They were spreading lies — ideas about God that misled the people and destroyed them, the way wolves eat up sheep. This is serious. We must be aware that there are wolves in our midst, in the church and all around us.
What Makes a Prophet False?
I love this from John Nolland, in his commentary on Matthew. False prophets are to be defined negatively as those who, while claiming for themselves the capacity to define for others the will of God, represent in their practice — and probably also in their teaching, though not necessarily obviously — a false understanding of the will of God. Specifically, an understanding not in accord with the Old Testament law and prophets as illuminated by Jesus. What primarily defines them is the falseness of their relationship to the prophetic stance of Jesus.
Hear that. Jesus is laying down a new authoritative word on what the law is and does and means. He is the prophet. In Acts 3, Peter stands in front of them all and says Moses prophesied a prophet to come whom you must listen to. Jesus is the new Moses. The better Moses. He gives the new covenant, the new law, the new way — to show us what it all means and to restore our hearts so that we can obey it.
In this sermon and in all his teaching, Jesus is putting forward the standard. If you want to know the measure of truth, look at Jesus. What did he teach? Everything stands on what he says. If you want to know what the Old Testament means, you have to come at it through the words and teachings of Jesus. Everything comes through him.
So if Jesus is the measure of all truth, the question about any teacher is this: Do their teaching and their life agree with what Jesus teaches? Do they love what he loves? Do they hate what he hates? Do they actually do what he teaches?
And how will we know? By their fruit.
Not Just Which God — But Whether They Walk It Out
God's people were given a different warning in Deuteronomy 13. Moses said: if a prophet comes and gives you a sign or a wonder, and says, Look, something miraculous has happened — let us go after other gods — do not go after him. He is a false prophet. The Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord, keep his commands, and obey his voice.
But here, as he has done throughout this sermon, Jesus goes deeper than the surface. The question is not simply are they a Christian or not? Do they worship our God or not? The question is: does the person who professes my name actually walk out what I have taught them?
It is not about which God they confess. It is about whether they live it.
You will recognize them by their fruits. They teach things, but their lives prove what they actually believe. Their works expose their teaching. On the outside they might look pretty good. If you had spent a day watching the Pharisees and Sadducees in the street, you would have thought, Those are the holy guys. Those are the ones to follow. But Jesus says: focus in on what they do. Their lives prove they are phony. They miss God's heart.
Two Examples
First: Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? The obvious answer is no. They had thorns and thistles everywhere — it was a constant struggle, like buckthorn is for us. Everybody knew: nothing good comes from these things.
Second: good fruit does not come from bad trees. Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
Jesus is pressing the same point. You have to notice the fruit of a teacher's life. Not just the words that come out of his mouth. Not even surface-level religious practice. Look at the life he leads. Not just the Christian name. Not just the surface look.
The Cost
Look at verse 19. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
He is quoting John the Baptist. When John preached to the crowds and the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up, he called them a brood of vipers and said the axe is laid to the root of the trees — every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. He was warning leaders who were praised before men: your end is destruction. You miss God's heart. You do not know him. You have turned away from him. You call yourselves sons of Abraham, you love that you know the law of Moses, and yet you fail to obey it.
And for us, Jesus gives a similar warning. If you follow their way of life, you will be on that same path of destruction. Any time you fall in line with somebody who is stepping off the narrow path, you are in just as much danger as they are. You may not have been the leader, but you are in just as much danger.
Think of Pilgrim's Progress — if you follow the guy who says it'll be fine to take the easier path, you're in as much trouble as he is.
So Jesus warns the disciples: watch out. If you follow them, their end is destruction, and so will yours be.
We read it this morning in the catechism: the end of all who reject Christ is hell. It's heavy. These are eternally weighty matters.
Why I'm Pressing This
I bring this to you because Jesus wants us to know that some of our friends are going to hell.
Michael and I were talking about this while we were painting — friends who have abandoned the faith. We were wrestling with it. What is it that leads them there? There are so many people we have watched seemingly live out the Christian faith for years, with some level of maturity, some zeal — and then all of a sudden they fall apart. You see it in friendships. You see it in public figures. It's everywhere. You don't have to look only at the Christian leaders falling right now. I have a list of names — friends from the past, friends from now — who have fallen away, and who will not see the Lord if they don't turn and repent.
And here is what you need to hear: every one of those people was misled somewhere. Their own flesh misled them: this just isn't worth it; better to live the life I want and follow my desires. Or the world deceived them: Christians are liars and phonies; that's all this is. Or the devil came at them in the middle of suffering or some other terrible thing.
We have an enemy we need to beware of. And this morning's topic is specifically the false teachings and false voices we have to learn to discern.
Eternity is on the line, church, for every one of us. I am so zealous that we would all sit at the table together. And it is not automatic. God keeps his own — don't get me wrong, and we'll finish there today. But we still have a life to live. We still have to finish this race strong, and I am so concerned that we would finish it together.
Kids, your moms and dads are instructing you in the way of the Lord because they want you to get home with us. You will face many trials and many temptations, and we are so zealous that you would not fall away. There will be lies that come at you, suffering that comes at you, fleshly desires and temptations that want to lead you astray. We want you to stand firm.
So we have to teach this. This is what Jesus did. He taught us to beware. To watch out. This is not an easy path. The road is narrow and the way is hard.
Learning from Church History
We could dive into church history and find dozens of examples of false teaching that has hit the church over the years — some of it still prevalent, some of it dissipated. Satan is cunning. He takes every opportunity. He doesn't care whether it's called Gnosticism or deconstructionism or anything else. He doesn't care what it looks like, as long as it destroys you.
You can look at any period in history and find false teaching plaguing the church and leading people astray. I'd encourage you to do that — it will serve your discernment now. Read the theologians. Sometimes it feels strange, because you get into those books and think, these aren't our problems. But you can learn how they used the word of God to say, "Jesus did not teach that."
And notice: it is rarely word-for-word contradiction. This is where the church has to be discerning and wise and say, "No — you're in a ditch on this side, or a ditch on that side." That's usually how it works. They hold a partial truth, but they've been pulled off into one ditch or the other. Usually it's either liberalism — it's easy, just give yourself permission — or extreme legalism — you have to be everything we say, or else.
And that's exactly what is going on today.
The Granular and the Broad
Let me frame this once more before we discuss it.
All of us face false teaching that is very granular, every single day. You might hear it in a commercial or a movie. You might hear it in a sermon or a podcast. Little granular teachings you have to discern and think through. Most of us are reasonably good at that day to day — if you know the word, you can say, "No, that's not what the Bible teaches. That's a miss."
But there are also whole bodies of teaching — broader ideas that plague the church and are much harder to discern, because they are all-encompassing. They try to redefine you, or the church, or the society we live in. And they get confusing because they feel so true. Something about them seems so right. Those are the ones that are hardest to see.
So I'm curious — not the granular so much, though the granular forms the broad. What are the broader false teachings of our age? The last ten, twenty, thirty years? What have you encountered?
From the Body
"Love is love." Yes. And that's typically a redefining of sexual ethics. It can also run toward cheap grace — you can do whatever you want, and God is going to save you no matter what. That one has a lot of tentacles.
Gender and gender roles. Yes. And underneath it, the idea that we are progressing as a society, moving away from the ancient ways — and that this progress is scientific.
Universalism — many paths to God. Huge, and extremely common right now. It usually starts with the erasure of hell, and moves toward universalism from there.
"That's your truth." Relativism. Even the packaging of that phrase is common today. And it's difficult, because that idea has pervaded the church and made it almost impossible to say, "Your life is out of order with Jesus; your teaching is out of order with Jesus." People swim in a sense of well, we're all kind of good, aren't we? We're all kind of okay.
A Jesus identified primarily as kind and tolerant — a Jesus who can be defined however you want him to be.
"I'm a Christian, so I've already done my part." I've said the prayer. I've paid my dues. It doesn't matter how I live now. The big theological name for that is antinomianism — God's grace covers whatever comes after, and how you live doesn't really matter, as long as you keep professing Jesus as Savior. We're all just sinners anyway.
And that spawns smaller versions: I said the prayer once, and that's the end of it. Or I got baptized — you can run that across denominations. I was baptized as a baby. Fill in the blank of what happened to you; now you can live how you want.
There's a communal version too: all you need to do is show up on Sunday. As long as you're part of the Christian community in some way — you attend the mass, you attend the service — that's all Jesus really requires. You check it at the door every week. That one is so pervasive. I don't think it will ever go away. It's one of the most fundamental rebukes we get from the apostles, and you can trace it through the whole history of the church.
Morality as collective rather than personal. This one I see in the culture and even in the church — a view of morality where it's no longer about your individual decisions being good or evil. Good and evil become collective. Are you part of a group that has been sinned against, or a group that has done the sinning? And so it's no longer about choices that need to be reconciled to God; it's about one group being reconciled to another. It changes the way you interact with everybody, in a really strange way.
I want to honor Ross here for a second. Pastor Ross has done an excellent job on the elder team at identifying false teaching, and it seems to be a gift of his as a teacher — he can spell it out clearly and say, "This is what's taught, and this is Jesus' way. That's the path they're suggesting; this is the path Jesus welcomes us to." I'd commend you to keep listening to Ross when he calls things out like this.
Despising age and prizing youth. Not just despising the elderly, but the idea that getting old is bad and youth is the prize. A lot plays into that. We get to be our own god. We're young, we feel invincible — so it's a self-reliance thing, and it makes dependence feel intolerable. Forging your own path. And it's deeply proverbial: we love being fools and despising the wisdom of those older than us.
And the tentacles of that, the grayer pieces — man, I struggle with that. Commercials get right at you. I hate that I'm getting older. I look different. Motherhood has changed the way I look. That's more granular, but it's the same root.
Holding contradictions and calling it acceptance. Two things directly opposed to each other, and we accept them both. Children are a gift — but also accidents, or burdens, rather than the joys God designed them to be. Babies are cute, but in twenty years they're something else entirely. It's incoherent, and nobody notices.
How This Gets Into the Church
Here's what I want you to see about how this works.
The devil is deceptive. Think of the garden of Eden. He brings a lie, and it penetrates, and somebody grafts onto it and eats the fruit. As the fruit gets handed to more and more people, and more people taste an idea and think, oh, that's good — I like how that fits, how that tastes right now — it begins to influence the world. Culture forms out of the influence of more and more people aligning with the idea.
And the church sits inside a culture. Inside a society with the prince of the power of the air ruling over it. We swim in this stuff. It's the air we breathe. The people of God cannot avoid being in this space.
So what happens is that people in the church hear the whispers from culture. They grasp onto it. They taste the fruit too. They bring it into the church. They begin to influence others. And then it moves and spreads — like gangrene, Paul says. It spreads and spreads. The poison is eaten, the devil gives, the world influences, it makes its way into the church, and false prophets emerge and begin to mislead the church.
And here we are today, with extreme division in the body of Christ. I think a lot of the center of those divisions is false teaching. Shepherds and true prophets rise up and say, "No, that's wrong. That's not true. You are at risk of being called a wolf. You might be a false prophet if you don't repent." And there's a clash. Division breaks out all over the place. The world looks in and watches the church go at each other. And the enemy has won in sowing discord.
And Jesus says again: beware of false prophets.
It Will Come Back Dressed Differently
Think of the prosperity gospel. It's not as present in our circles, because we've heard so many warnings against it — but it's still pervasive in the church.
Here's the thing, though: there is going to be a new iteration of every one of these. And it will be more enticing to you and to your kids in the next generation.
So let's not become people who say, "Yeah, I've heard the prosperity gospel thing. That's not me. We said no to that a long time ago" — while we are locked into a consumerism we can't even see, where our whole life is focused on the here and now, on comfort, on what we can get. What the world offers is enticing to us. What the devil offers is enticing to us. And it will be enticing to our children and our disciples.
I think of Mike Winger, or MacArthur and some of his followers, and others in the church right now who get a bad rap because they're regularly calling people out. I'm not sure that's the ministry I'd encourage every one of you to go build — I'm not asking you to become false-teacher-boppers. But those guys are necessary. We need people in the church who say, "Flag here. Watch out. The fruit of this life does not align with Jesus."
And by God's grace, people have repented because of it. The church pays attention, because it creates enough of a stir that people think, oh my goodness, they're onto something. And little by little, the thing gets weeded out of the church.
But this is the reality: until Christ comes, those weeds keep growing. They grow in our own hearts. They grow in the community like gangrene. And we have to keep cutting them off. No, that's not true. That's not right. Lord, we repent. This is why we go to our knees — because we are constantly bombarded by false teaching that we sometimes believe, sometimes align with, sometimes say yes to. And we have to repent.
The Loud Errors and the Quiet Distortions
There are ideas and prophets that have misled entire generations and entire populations. Muhammad taught Christian and Jewish ideas but led people away from Jesus entirely — Jesus didn't die, so he didn't have to rise, so the whole thing Jesus came to do is gone. He was a good prophet, one among many; Muhammad was the last one. Joseph Smith, the same pattern — he is the great prophet who figured it out.
Right now there's an insane cultural paganism coming in, where people even in the church are embracing the occult and New Age practices — beginning to mislead people away from Christ as the central wisdom, the Spirit we need. These are ideas that turn us to a different gospel entirely.
Then there are the loud errors inside the church:
The prosperity gospel, and the Word of Faith movement that comes out of it
Cheap grace and antinomianism
Revised sexual ethics
A smaller god — universalism, the erasure of hell
The politicized gospel — the merging of national identity with Jesus
Denial of Scripture's authority
And then the quiet distortions — a lot of what you've already named:
Moralism, reducing everything Jesus taught to behavioral improvement. I see this in my parents' generation; a lot of the Lutheran church has fallen apart over it. We just need to be better people in the world.
Therapeutic self-help religion
The gospel swallowed up by a program
Consumerism
It goes on and on. And all of these little tentacles want our hearts. They want to mislead us and turn us away from preaching Jesus and living Jesus the way he called us to.
This is not just someone saying they're a Christian. This is not surface-level stuff. The question is whether we are fully obedient to Jesus' teaching and way of life. Do we relax what he has taught? Are we discerning? Are we wise? Are we cautious?
Be Discerning
I could share personal stories of ideas and teachers that have come at me over the years. Rob Bell was a big one in the evangelical church — I read his books; I had friends who loved him and went down that path, and now they're fully deconstructed and have abandoned the faith. Behind him was Richard Rohr, who influenced and is still influencing a lot of big names. You'd be surprised who was shaped by him.
You can find that pattern all over the church. An influencer lands on a favorite idea, and something about Jesus or his way just sits wrong with them, so they start reaching for whatever their ears tingle for. And then they pass it on, and many, many people fall away.
So, church, we must be discerning.
We must be discerning when we're watching reels and shorts. When we're watching the news. When we're reading the best financial advice and investing our money. When we're choosing a church. When we order our week, when we decide where to focus our attention, where to spend our money, where to give our energy.
In all of it, Jesus says: Watch me. Look at me. Repent when you fail. Don't take the easy path. Every one of us is going to fail here. But we need to stay on the narrow path, and we need to listen to one another when somebody calls out, "That is false. That is not true."
My dad said some crazy things in 2020. Some of it I honestly despised — I told him it was crazy, that he needed to stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense. And yet in it, there were things he was right about. He saw something wrong, and he was calling it out.
So be careful. When people warn you, sometimes it isn't packaged well. Sometimes you think, ah, he's just another false-teacher-bopper; stay away from that guy. But we need to listen to one another. We need to pay attention to those in the church who are calling this stuff out, and we need to talk with one another about it.
The Promise
Let me conclude with the good news. Jesus gives this warning because eternity is on the line — and he also gives us this promise, in John 10:27–29:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
We need to watch our own hearts. We need to be diligent, discerning, and wise in this world. And we need to know that there is a King and a Lord who has our hearts, who has put his Spirit within us, who has given us the mind of Christ, and who has told us that we know the truth.
We need fellowship with him. We need to be near him. Stay close to Jesus. Listen to him. He is the good shepherd, and he will keep you. No one is able to snatch us out of the Father's hand.
This is what he purchased for us. This is what he died for — that we could be his, and he could be ours. And that's what we want, forever and ever.
Amen. Let's pray.