Beware of False Prophets - Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost

Eighth Sunday after Trinity
August 7^th, Year of Our + Lord 2022
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota

   God speaks.  Our Lord, the true God, is a communicator.  He uses language, not just to tell us things, but to do things.  As the Psalmist writes:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host…For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. (Psalm 33:6, 9)  As scientists discover more and more about God’s creation, the speaking nature of our Creator is ever more awesomely revealed.  The physical world is built for communication, designed for delivering messages.  Within the last 200 years we have successively learned that a needle bouncing along grooves can reproduce words and music, that electricity flowing through a wire can carry information and sound, and that invisible waves passing through and around us can carry voice, and data, and images.   

   The language bias of our Creator Lord is nowhere more amazingly revealed than in the genetic code that resides in every living cell, without which there is no life.  DNA and RNA, acids and proteins, are arranged in intricate spiral codes, biological language, generating messages that tell cells how to grow and what to become.  God speaks, and life is.  And that life is filled with communication, including microscopic messages that cause things to happen, language on which life depends.  This biological communication reminds us that the Lord God Communicator Almighty is the source of all life, all knowledge, all words, living and active. 

   God speaks, and does His works by speaking.  So we should not be surprised that the Lord hates false prophets, false speakers, preachers who dare to claim to speak on God’s behalf, but who instead speak lies, false promises and foolishness.  False prophecy offends God to His core, for God is the Speaker, the Truth Teller, the Eternal Word who makes and maintains all things with His voice.  He calls and sends prophets to work on His behalf, for the good of people, for the good of their hearers.  But no good comes from false prophecy.  Good only comes from faithfulness to the speaking of God.  Nothing but brokenness and evil can result from the proclamation of lies.

   And so from Jeremiah we hear of God’s anger against these dreamers, self-appointed prophets who dream dreams, and tell the people what they want to hear, instead of the difficult truth they need to hear, so that they might be turned from their evil ways, and live. 

   And St. Paul warns the elders, that is the pastors and bishops of the church at Ephesus, that false teachers would arise.  From outside the Church, yes.  But also from among their own number men would arise speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.  False teachers attacking from the outside is bad enough.  But so much more demoralizing, for preachers and hearers alike, is the corruption of one called and committed to proclaiming the truth, but who later begins to distort the Word and mislead God’s people. 

   Since Jeremiah and Paul were both faithful preachers chosen and sent by Jesus, it is not surprising that their message correlates perfectly with Jesus’ word to us today.  “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”  And as Jesus explains, it is pretty simple to identify false prophets:  “You will recognize them by their fruits.”  The fruit of a prophet tree is the message that comes out of the mouth.  Put simply, God the Communicator has given us His unchanging Word, and so we can compare any prophet’s message to that Word, and so know whether the prophet is a faithful sheep called to speak on behalf of God, or whether underneath the wooly exterior hide the fangs of a murderous wolf, seeking to take a bite out of God’s lambs.     

   False prophets, lying preachers, have been a problem ever since we have had problems, ever since lies first deformed God’s good creation.  The warfare of God’s Church always has and will be until the End a battle of messages, a warfare that rightly consists in accurately proclaiming God’s message, and also in resisting and refuting the lies of Satan and the false prophets who, consciously or unconsciously, promote lies against God’s Truth.    

   So, what false prophecies afflict us?  It is insufficient to merely point out the general problem of unfaithful teaching and preaching.  As God’s flock we should identify and reject the particular false ideas that threaten to lead us astray, the wolves that are stalking our flock in our day.  Sadly, there are many that we could talk about. 

  Some are easier to pick out, like completely false religions that openly reject God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as He reveals Himself through the Holy Bible.  And there is materialism, both crass, “I want more stuff materialism.” And there is sophisticated “scientific materialism,” which uses the good gift of science as a cover for denying God’s existence, and just so happens to leave mankind at the top of the ontological pyramid.  A heady intellectual route to fulfilling the false promise hissed out by the serpent:  “You will be like God.” 

   There is the replacement of true religion with politics, so common today, the quest by people all across the spectrum to find a new messiah, a savior, in an elected official.  All the while making demons out of citizens on the other side of the political divide.     

   We have lots of false prophets, lots of areas we could consider.  This morning, let’s focus on just one area, and dig in a bit.  For the false prophets of the sexual revolution are perhaps the ravenous wolves with the largest influence today.  All of us have been affected. 

   There are plenty of obvious, grotesque examples.  Consider for a moment the behaviors and activities that today will get you labeled a menace to society, if you dare to oppose them.  There is a vocal minority promoting “drag queen story hours” as an important social good.  The most basic human biological reality, that human beings are either male or female, is rejected by powerful voices who claim that there is a spectrum of sexuality along which people can move, back and forth, according to what they feel on a given day.  If your physical characteristics don’t fit what some Instagram prophet has convinced you is your true identity, no worries.  The medical establishment has been recruited to “help” you, by filling you with hormones that stop and reverse normal development, and surgeries that permanently disfigure your human body.  Talk about wolves seeking flesh to devour. 

   This is unpleasant to talk about, but it needs to be said, because people, more and more often children, are being sucked into these lies, suffering physical and emotional wounds that will not heal in this lifetime.  On top of that, as this twisted distortion of God’s plan for humanity and family and men and women is accepted by more and more people, we are making ourselves into a sterile, increasingly childless society.  And without babies there is quite literally no future for the human race.  These false prophets and their lies must be identified and rejected.  But, lest we think this just means pointing a finger at all those freaks “out there” on the fringe, we need to face up to the root of today’s madness, which lies much closer to home, for all of us. 

   What I mean is this:  The cultural upheaval of the last 25 years has been breathtaking.  Even in 2008 and 2012 it was still impossible to get elected president of the United States without defending the traditional definition of marriage.  But then the dam broke.  In 2015 the Supreme Court redefined marriage to include homosexual unions.  Two seconds later, it seems,  the “cause celebre” shifted from merely giving homosexuals the “right” to be left alone to get married, to the requirement that everyone celebrate homosexuality.  And pansexuality.  And transexuality and gender fluidity.  It became a pressing national concern that little boys to be encouraged to consider whether they might really be little girls, and vice versa for little girls.  It is madness. 

   But the madness didn’t start out there on the fringe.  No, the enabling shift happened when we Christians bought into the false teaching that “my happiness” is the priority in marriage and family and human sexuality.  You see, being a godly man or a godly woman in this fallen world implies some difficulty, some self denial, even some sacrifice.  God’s original good plan for man and woman, first communicated in the Garden, and also written into our DNA, is one of service to the other, of selfless love.  And this is a good thing, one of the very best things, actually a picture of how God Himself is: outward focused, more concerned for the other than for the self.  Yes, from the beginning great delight and pleasure were built into the Lord’s plan for the man and the woman and their children.  But the delight and pleasure were intrinsically tied to loving and serving the other, not in serving the self.    

   Christian marriage and family, even though battered by human sinfulness, even though we have never done it fully right, has always been a beacon of truth and hope.  But increasingly in recent decades, especially since the 1960s, the Christian Church has given in to the world’s perspective.  Marriage is understood by most to be about “my happiness,” not about serving one’s spouse and having children if God allows.  With this shift to “my happiness” the vows “till death do us part” morphed into “until it isn’t fun anymore.”  The blessing of children was transformed into a choice, to be balanced against financial security and free time and personal fulfillment.  No fault divorce, contraception and abortion on demand were the legal and medical tools that made these new goals, falsely called sexual freedom, seem achievable.  And the Christian Church in America has largely gone along.  We, you and I, have too much gone along.    

   The madness we see in culture today is extreme, but it builds on the same self-centered concepts.  God wrote the plan which teaches us to find fulfillment and joy in serving those outside ourselves, especially in the area of human sexuality.  The lies of Satan and the prophets of the world tempt us to seek only our own pleasure, our own momentary emotional fulfillment, without considering the consequences.  The result is wounded and broken people, many of whom also are tricked into believing the lie that whatever problems they might encounter are the fault of Christianity and the Christian God.  

    But of course, the Almighty Communicator, the One who wrote the good plan for man and woman and family, is not the problem.  In fact, He is the only solution.  The Word who is God became a man, to bring a message of healing, the only prophecy that has the power to undo all that we self-centered sinners have inflicted on ourselves, and each other. 

   The promise of joy and community and growth that was written into the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth is precisely what God’s eternal Son Jesus came to re-establish and fulfill.  Ironically, not by human marriage.  The hope of salvation tied up in God’s original plan was destroyed by our first parents falling for the lies of Satan.  A new marriage was needed.  A different, higher, greater unity, not between a single man and woman, but a marriage between a Savior and His Bride, the Church. 

    Because we are fallen sinners are filled with false ideas about marriage and family and God and humanity, we struggle to process all the ways that God in His Word uses the picture of marriage to describe His salvation project.  Let me sum it up this way:  God is the long-suffering husband, who puts up with terrible infidelities by His Bride.  We, self-centered sinners, are that unfaithful Bride.  We did not deserve to be cleaned up and brought to the altar, but this was God’s decree, His Word, His prophecy, His plan.  And that altar is a Cross. 

    The first bride was taken from the side of Adam, a rib taken by God to make the perfect partner for
man, the perfect woman to stand side by side with her husband.  The new bride likewise comes from the side of the New Adam, the Savior Jesus, who, hanging on the altar of God’s sacrifice for our sins, was pierced in His side.  Out poured water and blood, blood and water empowered by Jesus’ death, poured out to give life to His Bride the Church, life restored to all who are washed clean in His forgiving love. 

    Jesus is selfless love, poured out for sinners, for you and me, and also for those who have been taken to the extremes of today’s sexual wasteland.  We do not have the strength or wisdom to fix all that we broken.  But Jesus does.  He already has.  Even though we will still deal with the consequences of the false prophecies that have tempted us in this life, we can face these consequences without shame.  Indeed, we can face these consequences with hope.  For in Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom who laid down His life for His Bride, the Church, we are restored, forgiven, and brought into God’s family, His kingdom, today, and forever and ever, Amen.