Sermon Tone Analysis

Once again, it is a privilege to be here and to bring the Word of God to our congregation.

A few months ago, we started putting our sermons out on Podcast and through that process a new tagline kind of came to my mind that you may have seen shared around online or here on some of the slides every now and then.

It is, “Here, you will hear the Word of God.”

That is the ultimate goal that we have for any of our services, our teachings, or our gatherings.

We want people to hear the Word of God and not just our thoughts or opinions.

We will absolutely share personal stories and testimonies, but the main thing we want to be focussed on and draw everything from is the all-sufficient, inerrant Word of God as recorded in Scripture.

With that intention, we have spent the last three weeks walking word by word through chapter 7 of the Book of Matthew.

Today we are going to be primarily looking at chapter 7 and start in verse 15 if you want to turn there and hold your place.

Chapter 7 is the third and final chapter of the Greatest Sermon Ever Given, the Sermon on the Mount, given by Jesus to His disciples and the crowd that then formed around them as He was teaching.

Thus far we have seen Jesus juxtapose worthless self-righteousness and the righteous demands of the Holy God.

We see that we all fall short of God’s Standard, thus we are exposed of our need for atonement.

That is, our inability to be righteous on our own merit explains why Jesus would have to die for our sins.

So the primary response to the Sermon on the Mount, as I’ve stated throughout this series, the primary response is to mourn over our sinfulness and Christ says that those who mourn will be comforted.

At the same time, we are told that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be satisfied.

When we truly desire to honor God with righteous living, we understand that true righteousness is given to us from Jesus and through faith in Him and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to actually live righteously.

Now, I bring this up for a few reasons.

One is that as we walk through our Scripture today, we will see how saving faith is a prerequisite to doing any real good or righteous action.

We’ll come back to that idea later.

But I also want us to remember that when we really have faith in Jesus, we are ACTUALLY empowered to live righteously.

I am not claiming that any of us are going to be perfect after we have faith in Jesus.

If we say we have no sin, we are lying to ourselves, others, and God.

However, while the teachings within the Sermon on the Mount are lofty and we wont ever and always perfectly follow what our Lord commands therein, it is important to remember that Jesus is also giving practical instruction that we are to apply in our daily lives.

I am saying that mourning over sin and subsequent faith and comfort in Jesus not only saves the individual eternally, it transforms them into a new creature in the here and now.

If you know Christ as your Savior, your priorities ought to be different than the world’s.

If you’ve truly had your eyes opened to salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ, then your attention is drawn upward.

That means you now give a higher attention to the things that glorify God.

Not only that, but you are actually empowered to overcome the sinful temptations that you use to fall into.

I was talking to a brother this week and he brought up this verse:

This verse is often misused to say that God will never give you more than you can bear.

That’s not what it says.

God may very well give you a burden that leads to your death.

There is going to come a time for all us in which the physical strains on our life are more than we can bear and we can no longer take another breath.

I don’t say that to be morbid, but rather just to explain the reality we all face in this mortal body.

What 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us, is that in any and all circumstances God will not let us be TEMPTED beyond our ability.

That means that God has enabled those who truly love Him to remain focussed on Him in every situation and to run from sin.

In fact verse 14 there in 1 Corinthians says “Therefore, flee from idolatry.”

So we are taught in Scripture that when we are reconciled unto God through faith in Christ, we are eternally saved and changed in the here and now.

We are enabled to fix our eyes on what is above and we know that we can flee from temptation because God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can stand.

Even in very difficult circumstances we can go through them without giving in to sinful temptation.

I wanted to make that point first this morning, because when we hear Jesus teaching us here in the Sermon on the Mount, it most definitely convicts us and points us to our need of a Savior, but it is also direction that we are called to apply in our efforts to glorify God, seek the things that are above, whilst fleeing from temptation.

Jesus is giving His followers at that time and us here today, actionable guidance on living a holy, set apart life for the glory of God.

And there has been so much good, good teaching throughout this sermon.

If you’re just joining us here recently, go back and re-read chapters 5 and 6 of the book of Matthew.

It is a goldmine of divine instruction for all those who are seriously following Jesus to consider.

He gives direction on anger, lust, marriages, making oaths, retaliation, loving your enemies, giving to the needy, how to pray, how to fast, what to work for, anxiety, judging others, and more.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount truly is a holistic teaching that shows spiritual need, glorify God, and gives great practicality to the hearer.

And towards the end of this Sermon, where we are going to pick things up this morning, Jesus gives a warning.

Look at verse 15 of chapter 7 in Matthew.

Beware of false prophets.

Here’s what we know.

Jesus is not a false prophet.

Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one.

The one true anointed Priest, King, and Prophet.

Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus even says that He has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.

That means that all the things that the prophets spoke of in the Old Testament culminates in Jesus.

So the pinnacle of the prophets, the absolute source of divine revelation, tells those who follow Him to beware of false prophets.

It is at this point that we have to figure out exactly what a false prophet is.

Who is it that Jesus is telling His followers to watch out for?

The concept of a prophet would not be foreign to those hearing Jesus’ sermon.

Through their Jewish upbringing, they would have been taught about the prophets who were used by God to declare His message to the people.

They would know that God had used guys like Jonah, Isaiah, even Moses to speak to His people.

In the book of Jeremiah, one of the Prophets of the Lord, we find a helpful description of false prophets: The Lord is speaking through Jeremiah and says:

Later He adds:

What we gather from Jeremiah in regards to False Prophets is that they are claiming to speak on behalf of God, but they are just using that to push their own agendas.

False prophets are manipulators who want to see their own increase and do not bat an eye at using the name of the Almighty God to get there.

They come to people with the appearance of godliness, but their false message is ultimately destruction.

Their message is not from God and thus it points people to the wide gate that leads to destruction as Jesus’ had just been talking about in the verses prior to our section this morning.

In our Scripture this morning, Jesus says

False prophets may appear as gentle lambs, but be on guard because they are really wolves!

They lead people to destruction and destroy for their own gain.

They will tell people what they want them to hear because it will lead to an increase in their own position or Influence.

But here’s the thing, people like to listen to false prophets.

Why?

Because false prophets and teachers will gas you up even when that’s not what is good for you.

Look back to Jeremiah with me:

False prophets fill you with vain hopes.

That is to say they tell you what you want to hear so they can be liked.

They have no interested in the truth of God’s Word in a situation, they just want to do whatever will lead to their increase.

People soak this up because it is much easier to hear what you want to hear rather than be confronted by divine truth!

This describes a win-win situation for the false prophet and the people!

False prophets get to teach whatever they want that people gleefully accept because it suits whatever debased passions they have.

Everyone feels vindicate going about doing whatever they want.

Any and every unrighteous behavior and disposition is called good and we all live happily ever after.

But the problem is that Jesus already told us

False prophets and those who accept their teaching are smiling their way through the wide gate, dead set on the path of destruction in hell.

Just to sum up where we are at: False prophets are anyone who claim to speak with godly authority but are not preaching the message given by the One True God.

Jesus says to beware of such people.

They look nice, but will eat you up.

They lead you to destruction.

They are ravenous wolves that have no regard for your well being.

Now that we know what false prophets are, why people like them, and how they are destructive, we have to learn have to mark and avoid such destructive forces.

Jesus give His followers the basic principle for distinguishing false prophets:

Jesus is telling us that we can identify false teachers by the products of their life.

When I was a kid we had a tree out back at our house that would grow the most beautiful little apples.

They almost looked like miniature Granny Smith apples.

I remember one time playing outside with my sisters and I thought, man I can’t stand it any longer, I have to get me one of them.

So I picked off one of the beautiful little apples and took a big ole bite.

Immediately I regretted it.

What we had growing in our yard was not a miniature granny smith apple tree.

It was a crab apple tree.