Return to Sermon Archive  Return to Church Home Page

Text: Deuteronomy 18:15-22

I don't know where I was in preschool, but somehow I missed most of the children's stories and nursery rhymes and I can never get them straight. But I recall a story about Little Red Riding Hood.

I remember that Little Red Riding Hood goes to visit her grandmother, but the wolf has come. This sounds a little more violent that preschoolers should listen to, but didn't the wolf eat the grandmother? Well, somehow the wolf has taken the grandmothers place wearing her nightgown and cap when Little Red Riding Hood comes in.

I think this little girl needs glasses because she didn't know immediately that it was a wolf instead of her grandmother. But as she looks closer she says, "My, Grandma, what big eyes you have!" And the wolf answers, "All the better to see you with, my dear."

The she says, "My, Grandma, what big ears you have!" "All the better to hear you with, my dear!"

Then the girl says, "My, grandma, what big teeth you have!" At which the wolf replies, "All the better to eat you with, my dear," and lunges for Red Riding Hood. Thankfully, the woodsman comes to her rescue and kills the wolf.

Today I want to talk not about wolves in grandma's clothing, but wolves in sheep's clothing.

There were four lectionary texts proposed for today's sermon. I found that I had already preached on a couple of them, and then I noticed this text about false prophets. My first reaction was, "I know I don't want to preach about that!" Usually, when I feel that way, I think to myself that it may be a sign that I need to preach on that topic. I don't believe I have ever preached about false prophets, but today I will wrestle with the subject with you.

Jesus said there would be false prophets. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves…. (Matthew 7:15).

Do you know of any false prophets? Do you know any wolves in sheep's clothing? I want to raise that question and ask you about these who seem to me to be false prophets.

Perhaps you have heard some of the outlandish statements made by Pat Robertson recently. He said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was suffering from a stroke because he was being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel. He did later apologize for that one.

He also called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying, "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war…"

When the city of Dover, Pennsylvania voted against the school board members who had favored teaching intelligent design in the classroom, he said, "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for his help because he might not be there."

Is that a sheep or a wolf?

Pastor Fred Phelps and the members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas have picketed funeral services of known homosexuals with placards saying things like "Matthew Shepherd is in hell. God hates fags." You can look up their church website at godhatesfags.com where you will read that Matthew Shepherd has been in hell 2,666 days.

Today at 2 p.m. they will picket the funeral services of West Virginia coal miner Don Bragg in Man, West Virginia. The organization has faxed flyers to newspapers, including the Williamson Daily News, which said, "Thank God for 2 more dead miners. We wish it had been 200 rather than 2. WBC will picket their funerals. WBC will humbly pray for God to visit more calamities upon West Virginia." Somehow they have tied West Virginia with approval of homosexuality and the new movie "Brokeback Mountain. The flyer further states, “God hates West Virginia. God himself has now become West Virginia’s terrorist.”

Is that a sheep or a wolf? I have my opinion, and it probably obvious to you what it is.

Anytime we proclaim the truth, there will be those who seem to not be in the same ballpark with us. All the way through the Bible, we deal with this issue. It was especially so as Christian churches were planted, and they began to tell the good news about Jesus Christ. There were inevitably who would distort the message, sometimes so much that it was another gospel.

Paul recognized this, and in the book of Acts, he said, "I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them" (Acts 20:29-30).

There is a warning about a similar danger in 2 Timothy, "For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

My problem with talking about false prophets is not that I don't think there are false prophets. I do think there are false prophets. The problem is that everybody of every persuasion thinks that somebody else is the false prophet. It seems that the essence of the definition of a false prophet is, "If you disagree with me then you are a false prophet."

I have my favorite list of false prophets, but everybody else has a favorite list as well. The Pentecostals call the Catholics false prophets, the Calvinists call the Armenians false prophets, the Church of Christ call almost everybody a false prophet. And there are those who would call me a false prophet.

It is a struggle to understand who really is a false prophet, and you can't always tell a false prophet by the number of people who are following them. It seems to me there are a lot of people who can't tell grandma from the wolves! Some of the most outlandish of prophets have great followings and television ministries.

I want to share what the Bible says about false prophets. The Bible talks about the subject in several places in the Old Testament and the New. I want to share some of the statements the Bible makes and conclude with how I wrestle with the issue.

In our text for today, Deuteronomy 18:20 talks about "any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods…" In the days described in Deuteronomy, there would have been prophets who spoke in the name of Baal and other gods as well as in the name of Yahweh. We, of course, do not believe there are other gods, but the people of that day did. The verse says those who speak in the name of other gods are false prophets, and ends ominously, "that prophet shall die."

Sometimes when I hear some of the outlandish statements like these I have quoted to you, I wonder if they worship the same God that I do. When I hear them pronouncing such a message of hate, calling for death, I cannot believe they are talking about the kind of God that I know. I sometimes wonder if they are preaching about another god altogether.

The later part of verse twenty talks about a prophet who "presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak…" There is a great danger for any of us who handle holy things. We must be careful when we say we are speaking for God. It is so easy to mistake my opinion for God's opinion. I believe we should be very hesitant to speak a word that might not be coming from God. We should be free with our opinion and sparse with God's opinion. The Bible makes it very clear that that is a dangerous thing to do.

How do we know if the prophecy is from God? Deuteronomy 18 goes on to say, "You may say to yourself, "How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?" If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it" (Deuteronomy 18:21-22).

If the prophecy is made and doesn't come true, then that prophecy is not from God. There are prophets in the Old Testament that I don't want to question, but I am a little more skeptical about prophets today.

There are those who predict the future and don't always predict it correctly. One of the most famous was William Miller in the 1800s. He decided that the Second Coming of Christ was going to happen on October 12, 1844. Thousands of people gathered on a hillside after quitting their jobs. They waited for the Lord to return, but he did not.

I find it fascinating that these kind of prophets who get their predictions wrong are not labeled as a false prophet. Most of them say they were just slightly mistaken and the real event will happen next year. William Miller got away with that tactic for a while.

One of the most popular prophets who has done that is Hal Lindsey, who wrote the Late Great Planet Earth. That was a very popular book in the seventies. Now 35 years later, the prophecies in that book are all proven false. But Hal Lindsey is still out there predicting the future and has a great following. We need to be very careful about those who predict the future.

Another place in the Bible that deals with false prophets is 1 John. Chapter 4 says, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."

In this setting, they were dealing with people who said that Jesus was God, but not human. They were connecting with Greek philosophy which said that truly spiritual things cannot have anything to do with the flesh. The Docetists said that Jesus only seemed to be flesh and blood. So the writer of 1 John emphasizes that true doctrine affirms that Jesus was human.

In the days of 1 John, it was easy for people to believe Jesus was God and hard to believe that he was human. But today it is easy for people to believe he was human and hard for them to believe he was God. Either way we have to be careful to not get too far outside the "classic Christian doctrines," as I like to call them. I do believe there is a body of beliefs that gives good guidance to what Christians generally have believed. When doctrine gets too far from the from the classic Christian doctrines then a person is moving out of the safe zone. Within these classic Christian doctrines, I think there is a lot of room. One of the things our church affirms is soul liberty, the priesthood of the believer and that God is still speaking.

One of the local ministers was distressed that some local churches would not associate with the ministerial association. He said, "I told them that you don't have to be my twin to be my brother or sister in Christ." I love that line. We don't have to be exactly alike, but I do believe there is such a thing as false doctrine. We have to weigh it always by the Bible because the Bible is our guide for faith and practice.

Jesus said in Matthew 7, "By their fruits you will know them." Jesus thought you would be able to tell a person's truth by the character of their lives. I think it is like the wolf in sheep's clothing. When you get close enough, you will know because "a good tree brings forth good fruit, and a bad tree brings forth bad fruit." We have to be somewhat careful here because all of are sinners. Every preacher is a sinner and will make mistakes.

John says another test is the love of God. 1 John 4:7-8 says, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."

Jesus once summed up all the law and commandments as loving God and loving others. That's a great measure of a prophet. Love seems to speak to the motivation of the prophet. If we are not a wolf, but a genuine sheep trying to follow Jesus, love will be one of the evidences of that.

There is one last reference in Deuteronomy that I want to point to. It seems to say that you will just know about the prophets if you know God. In chapter 13, there is another passage that talks about false prophets. Right in the middle of that discussion is this odd sentence in verse 4 that says, "The LORD your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast."

In the midst of the discussion about prophets, true and false, you will not go wrong as long as you cling to the Lord alone, and worship the Lord alone. Follow God; not the prophet. And the better you know God, the more likely you are to recognize a false prophet.

There is a story from ancient China about an apprentice who came to an expert jeweler to learn his craft. The old man said, "Come tomorrow, and I will start your apprenticeship." When the young man showed up bright and early, the old man gave him a ruby and instructed him to sit in a corner and study the ruby. He studied all day long. The next day, the old man gave him the ruby again and told him to study it. At the end of two weeks, the young man was very frustrated with his training. He protested, "For two weeks you have had me looking at this one ruby! I want to learn how to be an expert jeweler. What are you doing to me?"

The old man didn't say anything. He just dropped another stone in the young man's hand.

The apprentice took one glance at it and proclaimed, "That's not a ruby!"

If you look long and hard enough at God and the false appears, you will say, "That's not a prophet!"

Prayer:

O Lord our God, we confess that there are many who proclaim the gospel. We hear many who talk about faith of all stripes and many who preach different versions the Christian faith. Lord, we are tempted to blast those who differ from us. Help us to find common ground instead. Remind us that we don't have to be twins to be brothers and sisters in Christ. But help us to so know the Bible and the truth about God that we can recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing. Amen.