Discernment in the Kingdom

Good morning, church, and happy July 4th weekend. It's good to see you here this morning and we're continuing our series entitled Kingdom Living. We've been going verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount. Before I begin, I want us to pray. I'm thankful for our country that we have the freedom to have worship the way we do.

That we can worship God freely, we can share our faith with others, people can hear the Gospel freely. And I think it's appropriate for us to give thanks on a weekend like this. But not just this weekend, but every day. Let me pray. Lord, thank you.

Thank you for the blood of Jesus that makes it possible for us to know you and receive the forgiveness of our sins and be adopted into the family. And first and foremost, we thank you for the freedom we have in Christ. But Lord, we also thank you for the patriots that have shed their blood in order for us to have freedom. Freedom isn't free. And we are thankful, Lord, for those that bought our freedom, that we might have a place that we can pass on to our children and grandchildren where the gospel is freely proclaimed and people are able to worship freely.

We're thankful for that, Lord. So be with us now as we preach your word, as we hear your word. Help us to be good listeners and obedient to what we hear. In Jesus name and all God's people said, Amen. Kingdom Living, we've entitled this series, we've broken it up into 16 parts and this is week 15.

So we're very close to the end. It's been a wonderful journey as we've gone verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount. And it's been called the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived. And certainly I would agree with that as we've studied this and it gets deeper and deeper as we study. And so much meaning and so much challenge in this Sermon on the Mount and in this sermon we call it Kingdom Living.

Because Jesus is saying, this is what kingdom life looks like for those who are Kingdom citizens, those who have made Jesus king. This is what it looks like. It looks like this. It looks like loving your neighbor as yourself, but not only your neighbor. It means loving your enemies.

It means cleaning up the way that you think about life. And so that the Ten Commandments is not just thou shalt not murder, but it's thou shalt not call your brother empty head or raca. It means thou shalt not commit adultery. Means also if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart. And he goes on, and he moves this outward religiosity to heart change.

And so the invitation of our church is to come as you are and be forever changed by the love of Jesus. In other words, come as you are, but don't stay that way. And so Jesus is moving from the pharisaical outward religiosity of his day, challenging them to have real heart change. And that's what the kingdom is about, and that's what he's talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. And he's bringing it to a close now as we get to the end.

And he gives four sets of pairs, if you will. Last week we hit upon the first one. He says there's two gates and two ways. One gate leads to destruction. It's wide, it's easy, and one is narrow, and it's hard, and it leads to eternal life.

And now he begins the second pair, if you will, this second set of twos. And he moves to There are two kinds of preachers, two kind of teachers or prophets, and they put off two kinds of fruit, and some put off bad and some good. And that's where we're at. Next week he'll talk about two types of confessions and two types of builders who build on two different kinds of foundations. He's closing the sermon, sermon now.

And he's told us what the kingdom life looks like. And now he's calling us to choose the narrow way. And he's calling us to not listen to false teachers. Dr. Danny Akin, the president of Southeastern Seminary, writes in his commentary. He says, just as it matters which spiritual and moral road we travel, it also matters which spiritual teachers we listen to and which moral guides we follow.

That's because looks can be deceiving. We must pay close attention and who we will listen to and who we will follow. Why do this warning here at the end? It's because he recognizes. Jesus recognizes that there are those who, after he teaches the Sermon on the Mount, there are going to be others who are going to lead people astray.

There are going to be others who lead people to the not the narrow way, but to the wide way, the broad way to destruction. Here's another reason why we should talk about this today. It's because Jesus talked about it. But it's also because false teaching is on the rise. It's increasing.

Jesus said this would happen when he gave his end times discourse in Matthew, chapter 24. He brings this back up again, and he says it'll be a sign of the end times an increase of false teaching. Jesus is not the only one. All the apostles talk about it. Paul talks about the rise of false teaching in Acts 22nd Corinthians 11 and 12, and also in 2nd Timothy, chapter 3.

He says it's going to increase. Peter talks about it in second Peter, chapter two, the increase of false teaching. John talks about it in First John 2, and in First John 4 he says, Test the spirits. And then Jude dedicates his whole book to it. It's a short little book, but the whole book's about beware of false teachers.

And so we need to beware of false teachers. We need spiritual discernment. To do this spiritual discernment, we must exercise this, or else we will potentially be led astray by false teaching. In Matthew, chapter 7, verses 15 through 20, Jesus warned His kingdom citizens that they must exercise spiritual discernment in order to avoid destruction, in order to avoid falling prey to false teachers. And I believe today we can exercise spiritual discernment in Christ and that Jesus gives us three ways to do this.

So let's look at the text, and then we'll unpack it together. Chapter 7 of the book of Matthew, starting at verse 15. 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 thorn bushes 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. This is God's word.

Amen. We're looking for three ways that in Christ we can exercise spiritual discernment. The first way is by knowing the truth to spot the deception. How can we exercise spiritual discernment in Christ? It's by knowing the truth in order to spot the deception.

Notice in verse 15, he begins with a command word in the Greek. It's an imperative Greek word. Beware. Beware. Be on the lookout.

Get your spiritual radar activated. You could be translated. Take heed. Be on guard. Watch out for false prophets, false teachers.

Why? Because they come in disguise. How do they come? They come dressed in sheep's clothing, but indeed they are wolves. Not just any kind of wolf, but ravenous wolves.

He says, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. They are dressed like sheep, but they are predators with predatory hearts. They are pretenders with predatory hearts. The word beware calls us to discernment. Now, it's a little confusing.

If you're reading through the Sermon on the Mount, maybe you're confused or maybe you sense a conflict that you're trying to learn. Chapter 7 begins like this. Verse 1. Remember this just a few weeks ago. Judge not that you be not judged.

Judge not lest you be judged. Right? So Jesus says, don't judge lest you be judged. And now he's saying, beware False teacher. So what's the difference between discernment and judgment?

What's the difference between discernment and judgment? Probably the simplest way is just to look at what he's saying is discernment means be fruit inspectors. To be fruit inspectors. You're not judging. You can't see their heart.

The Bible says man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. So look at the fruit of their lives and discern. Now, discernment also calls for the believer. Notice what I've said here. In Christ, we can exercise, exercise spiritual discernment.

So we're asking the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to help engage our mind and our observation and to see if it's consistent. So discernment is spirit filled. Spirit led evaluation of fruit in truth and love. That's discernment. Judgment.

We learned this earlier is hypocritical. Fault finding, condemnation in order to put someone down. It's hypocritical because Jesus said earlier, right? It'd be easier to get that speck out of your brother's eye if you could get that log out of your own. It's hypocritical and you're trying to.

He doesn't say, you shouldn't try to help get speck out of your brother's eye. He says, get the log out of your own first. Okay, so there's a difference, you know, we hear today. I thought Jesus said, do not judge. We hear the world say that to us.

Well, he did and it meant something. But he also said, you'll know them by their fruits, you'll recognize them by their fruits, which involves spiritual discernment. Hope that's helpful. The word false prophets, it's two words in the English. It's one word in the Greek.

I like Greek words like this. It's a compound word. Pseudo prophetess. One word, pseudo means pretending or false or liar. Pseudo prophetess.

False prophets, false teachers in sheep's clothing. When Jesus talks about believers, what does he often call us? His flock? His. His sheep of his pasture.

And so to say, sheep's clothing. They come in looking like a Christian, they've memorized Christian language and churchy language and they, they come across Christian, but they're not, they're false, they're pseudo prophetess, they're false prophets. They'll come in, in sheep's clothing, but inside, inwardly, where you can't see, but it'll be known over time as their fruit are exposed for what they are. Inwardly, they are ravenous wolves. The word ravenous has the idea of having such greed, such desire as to be insatiable, to be rapacious and insatiable in their desire, often desiring power, money, grasping.

They come at night. When do wolves come? They come at night in order to kill the flock. Now this was a well known agricultural imagery that Jesus would use and the people would think about. Many of the people in the audience were probably shepherds and they were like, you're right, those wolves, they come in cover of darkness when you can't see them.

They're deceptive, they're sneaky. And he goes, that's what false prophets are like. They're deceptive. The best way to reveal them is to recognize them with the truth. Jesus, I said earlier in Matthew chapter 24, when he's answering the questions that the disciples were asking, they, they were admiring the buildings, the temple and stuff of Jerusalem.

And he said, I'll tell you the truth, not one stone will remain on another. And they went, when's this going to happen? In chapter 24 he gives signs of the end times. And among them in verse 11, he says, and many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And so we see an increase of false teaching today.

We see it everywhere. We see it on the Internet, we see it on the television. It's easily accessible today. And we see a great increase in false teaching. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, and he identifies them as being under the influence of Satan.

He says this, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. He says Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light and they disguise themselves as sheep, as believers, but they're not, they're ravenous wolves.

You remember the story where Paul and Silas and his group of missionaries, they traveled from Asia Minor and they went into Greece and they stopped off At Philippi and Thessalonica. And both of those places the Jews at first listened, but then they cast them out and rejected them. And so they've gone from Philippi to Thessalonica. Now they're coming into the little town of Berea. And Berea reacted differently.

The Jews there in the synagogue heard the message that Paul was preaching and then they went back home and they looked it up to see if he was teaching the truth. Look what it says in Acts 17:11. And the people of Berea were more open minded than those in Thessalonica. And they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.

And Paul commended them for that. He didn't feel challenged by that. He was grateful because he knew he was preaching from the word of God. And so he committed the Bereans, because I wish everybody was like the Bereans, that they'd go home and they'd get their Bibles out and to see if what the preacher said was really there, if it's really true. Because I preach under this book, under its authority, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I study.

I'm an imperfect preacher, but I'm honest about it. And I do my best to expose what the word of God says. This is my source of credibility and authority. So go home and be like Bereans. Verify that what I'm preaching is true.

And so this is what he commended. Now, maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Maybe you've worked in a bank or maybe you've been a cashier at one of the big box centers. And people, they give counterfeit money. And the most popular counterfeit bills are the $20 bill and the $100 bill.

Most Popular counterfeited monies. And you might think, well, they probably train you by showing you what counterfeit money looks like. But you'd be wrong. Because the way they train you to, to identify a counterfeit is by knowing the genuine article. And so this is what a.

Hey, hey. Get a $20 bill out and feel how it feels. Hear the crackle when you pull it apart, hold it up to light and look at it. Flip it over and look at it and you'll notice. You'll get to know.

You'll just know. As soon as they hand it to, you'll know it doesn't feel right. $100 bill the same way. And so that's how they train, especially bank tellers know the genuine article. Then you'll be able to recognize the counterfeit.

This is what Jesus said in John, chapter 10. He said, My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. Here's what he's saying. I know them and they know me. I know their voice and they know my voice.

If you're a believer today, if you'll study the word of God, saturate your mind and your heart with the Word of God and learn to listen to the spirit of Christ speak to you, you'll know the real thing. You'll know the genuine article. Then when the counterfeit comes your way, you'll know that too. And you'll be able to beware and say, that's not right. That's not correct.

That's not the way it should be. There. Here's a question. Are you immersing yourself in Scripture on a regular basis? Are you allowing God's word to rewrite the hard drive of your mindset, of your thinking?

Are you comparing what you hear to the word of God itself? Don't let someone's charisma deceive you. Measure everything by the truth of God's word and by the voice of Christ. Are you listening for Christ's voice? These are questions that you should allow the Spirit to apply to your heart.

Right now, some of you are watching the Chosen, the series, the Chosen. And I think it can be helpful. Series like that. You know, you watch a movie, I remember back in the 70s or 80s, a movie series, a miniseries came out, Jesus of Nazareth. And I've seen several of these.

I know you've seen them too. And they can be helpful. It's someone, It's a director and an author trying actors, trying to reenact what's written here. But I've heard some of you come and quote from the Chosen or quote from a movie or something and go, hey, you remember when this happened? And I will say, and I have to say this often, people, yeah, I remember that happening there, but it's not in the Bible.

So here's what I would say to you Christians, if you want to enjoy one of those series, it might be really helpful to help you kind of get in touch with it. Might be. But be careful that that's not your Bible because it's an interpretation and it doesn't always perfectly get it. Right. So, yeah, I'm not against it.

I'm just saying that's not your source of truth. Okay. You know, Gary hates the Chosen. I never said that. Never said that.

Just saying it's not your Bible. Not your Bible. Your Bible's the Bible. Okay? In Christ, we can exercise spiritual discernment by knowing the truth to spot the deception.

Okay, that's the first way. Here's the second. Inspecting the fruit to expose the disease. Inspecting the fruit to expose the disease. We've covered verse 15.

Let's keep going. Verse 16, he says, and you will recognize them by their fruits. That word fruit or fruits is in the scripture seven times in our reading. It occurs seven times. This is the key word to this passage.

He says, you will recognize them. The word recognize has the idea of you will know them. You'll know them by their fruits. You'll know if they're the genuine article or the false article. You'll know.

You'll know if you're walking in the spirit. If you've got your discernment cap on, spiritually speaking, you'll know. Hey, there's something don't feel right about this. And he begins to talk about. He goes, you'll recognize them.

In fact, that's so important in verse 16, you will recognize them by their fruits that he concludes with that in verse 20. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits. Now he's going to give us some agricultural. He's given us some pastoral pasture references to sheep and wolves. Now he's going to go in a slightly different direction.

Agricultural. He says, you'll recognize them by their fruits. And he goes, are grapes gathered from thorn bushes? And you might have. People in that audience might have just sort of smiled and said, no, that's not true.

No, you don't get grapes from thorn bush. Well, what about figs? Do you get them from thistles? No. He goes, well, you know that, right?

Yeah, everybody knows that. Well, did you know this, that you can't get good fruit from a false prophet. You can't. And he's talking about the source of fruit, that good fruit only comes from a good source and bad fruit comes from a bad source. He goes on, and he gives that question which begs the answer, what?

No, doesn't answer it himself, but it begs the rhetorical. Answer the rhetorical question, no. And then he goes, so now he's going to apply it. Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. And in case you didn't get the point, in verse 17, he reverses the way he says it and says the same thing again.

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Here's what he says. If the person, if the teacher is true, they've had Heart change. You can't see the inside man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. But you can look at the fruit, because the fruit's out here.

Now, some of you might be experts at tree identification. You might be. My grandfather was. He could identify a tree. He could just look at it and tell you what kind of tree it was.

We'd go through the woods. He could tell. I'm not that good at it, but I can tell certain trees. I can especially identify an apple tree if there are apples hanging from the limbs. I bet you could, too.

I bet you if there's apples hanging, you go, I bet that's an apple tree. Now, I'm not sure I can tell you what kind of apple tree it is, but if it has apples hanging from it, I'll tell you right away. I know that's an apple tree. I remember growing up that. Just down the street from my house, where I grew up, at Ms. Miller's.

Ms. Miller had an apple tree in her backyard, and it had these little apples. They were shaped funny and kind of, you know, about that big. And I found out it's an apple tree, but that doesn't mean they always taste good. And my mom said, well, that's because those are crab apples. Apparently, they're good for cooking.

I can't prove that. But I'll tell you what they were good at. They were good at throwing. You could throw those crab apples. And Ms. Miller didn't like that.

And then I found out they were also good for getting you in trouble. I got in a lot of trouble with those crab apples. You can tell a tree by its fruit. You might not be able to tell if it's an apple tree or not, but as soon as it bears apples, you go, that's an apple tree. That's what Jesus says.

It takes a little time. You don't always recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing at first. In fact, they might be the most Christian person you ever met at first on the outside, but over time, you see them at the Walmart checkout, and they get ill with the checkout person because they didn't recognize something that was on sale or it took them too long to punch it in or whatever. And they get. You see them driving somewhere and you see him yelling at somebody or using some sort of strange sign language whenever you just observe them over time.

And all that fruit might be their followers. Are the people who follow their teaching becoming more like Jesus? Or what about their family? What about their. The way they treat their spouse and their kids.

And so fruit. Remember, this is a metaphor. It's not like we're going to bear fruit. It's about the outward product of our inward lives. The words, our relationships, our work, those things you can see, those things, you can inspect and see them outwardly.

And so he says, you'll know them. It might be. It might take a while. If you see an apple tree in off season, you won't necessarily recognize it until it produces apples, but you'll know them. And he gives these, these great images about thorn bushes and thistles.

Well, here's some verses from the Apostle Paul, who's talking about this, applying this in his teaching to Timothy. He says, anyone who teaches something different is arrogant and lacks understanding. Such a person has an unhealthy desire to quibble over the meaning of words. This stirs up arguments ending in jealousy, division, slander, and evil suspicions. These people are always causing trouble.

Their minds are corrupt and they have turned their backs on the truth. To them, a show of godliness is just a way to become wealthy. And so there are those who, they see religion, they see it as a means of greed, as a means of becoming wealthy. And they often accentuate obscure sections of the Scripture and base their whole ministry on those obscure sections. And it creates divisiveness in the church.

And so Paul's warning Timothy about it. You might even look at what Paul writes to the Galatians as an example of bad fruit. He calls them works of the flesh. But you could call it bad fruit, bad results, bad outworking. He says, now the works of the flesh are evident.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. He's talking about the kingdom of God, just like Jesus here. He's talking about. He says, that's bad fruit, those works of the flesh.

Now, the. The listeners, the hearers in Jesus day probably would have picked up on this. Did you know that thorns and thistles are like code words from the Old Testament for being under the curse? Go all the way back to the book of Genesis and you'll see it. Genesis, chapter three.

And to Adam he said, cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. So for Jesus, to use that terminology, the students of the Torah, the students of the books of Moses, they would have went, oh, those are the words that happened because of the curse of man's, because of man's sin. And they would recognize it. And just think about thorns.

Not only do they not produce grapes, they do produce blood. They cut you. So thorns, what kind of fruit do they have? They inflict pain. And what about thistles?

Well, I thought I knew what thistles were. You sometimes probably wonder what is the pastor studying during the week? Well, this week I was studying thorns and thistles and I was verifying, I thought I knew what a thistle was. And it turns out I was pretty much right. And they tend to have sticky leaves and it kind of gets residue on you.

And they often have burrs. You know what a burr is, like, it'll stick to animals fur and it'll stick to your clothes. So, like, if you're on a path and you're enjoying it, but you're in the woods, you decide, I'm going to go off the path. And you walk through, you get in some thorns, you get all cut up, and then you come out and you find out, I also went through some thistles. And your clothes are covered with little burrs and you're trying to get them off of you.

And the thing about those little burrs is that wherever you drop them, they grow more thistles. In fact, that's their means of propagation. They get you to carry their seed somewhere else by sticking to you. And if you think about thorns, if you think about a thorny prophet, he does harm to you. He inflicts, ultimately his teaching causes you pain.

And if you think about a prophet who teaches thistles, you spread the pain, you propagate it yourself, you begin to carry it to others. I just was just kind of digging in on those two words this week. In fact, I started thinking about some of the thorny and thistle y teaching of our day. And what happens is they tend to go just a little too far in one direction or the other and they land in a place that's dangerous. One is what I would call the word of faith movement or prosperity theology.

Some call it name it, claim it. Others might more correctly refer to it as blabbit, grab it. And it's the idea that your faith is what matters. If you have a lot of faith, then you can be wealthy and healthy and wise. But if you don't have enough faith, well, that's why you're sick.

Well, that's why you don't have something. And they're Making faith. Now faith's important. It's by faith that we believe. For by grace you're saved through faith and that not of yourselves as the gift of God.

It's important, but when you carry it too far, then you land in a false teaching because Jesus tells us there will be trouble in this world. That's just an example. Here's another one. Those that weave over into what I would call the too much grace and not enough righteousness ditch, they fall over here and they go, I'm saved. God's forgiven all my sins, past, present and future, which means I can do what I want to now.

And so it's all about grace, all about God's love, but not enough about holiness and righteousness. And Paul told Titus in Titus chapter two, he said, grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness because it's such a great salvation, freely given, we should live willingly holy lives. And maybe in that same ditch, that idea of grace, we move over even a farther step where we begin to accommodate the culture completely, where you can't tell the difference between the church and the culture. And so they begin to say things like this, that the Bible's outdated its view of sexuality, its view of gender, its view of judgment. It's outdated.

Jesus didn't really mean that. And they begin to redefine terminology. And so we have churches today that are affirming and accepting those that the Bible says are sin, those that the Bible says are apart from God's word. And they, they pronounce themselves and present themselves as being compassionate allies, but instead they are false teachers leading them on the road to destruction. If you really loved people, if you really cared about people, if you really wanted to be an ally, be an ally to Jesus and tell people the truth and tell them you love them in Jesus name.

And we have an invitation here at our church. Come as you are, Absolutely, come as you are. But don't stay that way. Come as you are and be forever changed by the love of Jesus. Because every one of us here came in as sinners and we're still sinners, saved by grace, we're still imperfect in this world, but tell people the truth.

And so some call this progressive Christianity. Well, it's progressing on the wide path to destruction. There's other categories I could mention. There's the self help Christianity where it's all about a better you, when in fact the scripture says you must crucify the self and there must be a new creation in Christ. We could talk about the other ditch that Some churches land in where the teacher is overly legalistic and makes it all about your dress code or, or a long list of don'ts that prove that you're a Christian.

And they're very legalistic and not enough grace. And so they can land over there with false teaching. And then there are false prophets that are just clearly false prophets who speak claiming special revelation. And so two of them are American made religions that both started in the 1800s. One was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 and it's a prominent world religion today and that's the Church of lds, the Latter Day Saints of Christ Jesus.

And they claim to be what we call Mormonism, but they have a confused view of Jesus. I wrote my master's thesis in seminary about Mormonism and so I know too much about it, so I won't talk further. But I will say this, that not only do they have a false prophet at its head, but they also have a problem with the divinity and the exclusivity of Jesus, which is a real warning sign that John talks about in First John chapter four. That was test the spirits. And what do they say about Jesus will determine what's true of a false teacher or a true teacher.

Which leads us to another American religion that was founded in the 1800s and 1870 by Charles Russell and that's the Jehovah's Witness, which has become very legalistic. They do not believe in the Trinity. And I could go on. So I'm not here today just to do this, but what I'm telling you is there's an increase. Did you hear what Jesus said?

He said there will be an increase in the last days of false teaching. And a couple of them today that have gone around the world are made in the usa, made in America, in Christ. We can exercise spiritual discernment by inspecting the fruit to expose the disease. To expose the disease. Notice he says that they are diseased.

The tree is diseased. Literally, you could translate it. Rotten on the inside. That leads us to the third, the third way. We've said if you know the truth, you can spot the lie, right?

If you examine the fruit, you can see the truth of it. And then here we go. Number three. Recognizing the end to avoid the destruction. Verses 19 and 20, verse 19.

He says this. He says every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. It sounds very similar to what he said about the wide way and the wide gate, that it leads to destruction. He's consistent here. There's not three ways.

There's not five ways. There's two ways. There's two gates, there's two ways, and there's two kind of teachers. There's true and there's false. There's good and there's bad.

And those that are bad will be judged and their teaching will be judged. And his description is very figurative, but also specific. He says they will be cut down and thrown in the fire. I started thinking about just trying to visualize cut down. Perhaps that implies that their ministry teaching will be exposed for what it is in this lifetime.

It will fail over time. There's their mad. Their manner of leading, their false inside will eventually show itself and expose itself and they'll be cut down. Okay? And boy, all you do is follow ministries today where they had a false person at the center.

And over time, it's exposed, they'll be cut down. And then this idea of thrown in the fire.

We have to say that this mirrors Christ's warning about destruction. And also, as Dr. Carson says in his commentary, says this speaks of eschatological ruin, final rejection by God and exclusion from his presence. This is final judgment. They will not escape final judgment. And so this is what Jesus is warning about.

And then he says, thus, you will recognize them by their fruits. He repeats verse 16. He adds the word thus, which could be. Therefore, in conclusion, you'll recognize them by their fruits. Might take time, but with spiritual discernment, eventually you'll know, you'll feel something's not quite right about their teaching and you'll pick up on it and be warned about it.

Because those who go on that road, that road leads to destruction. It sounds similar to what John the Baptist preached, this idea of trees and bad fruit and cut down. He says this in Matthew, chapter 3, verse 10. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

He said this. John the Baptist was preaching this to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He looked him right in the eyes and said, even now the ax is at the foot, it's at the root, about to cut it down. And I studied on that. I thought, what's he saying to them right there?

He's saying, your outward religiosity, all about show and not heart change. That whole thing's about to come crumbling down. Acts, hey, wake up and repent of your sin and come to Jesus. He's the Savior, and instead you're rejecting him. And don't you know that God's Already got his axe at the tree of your outward.

And there, listen. By 70 A.D. jerusalem fell. His prophecy came true. The ax was at the foot of the tree. And this idea of outward religion without heart change found its end.

It was cut down. And he warned against it. The Apostle Peter I mentioned talked about false teachers. And he talks about their destruction. In second Peter chapter two, he says this.

But there were also false prophets in Israel. Just as there will be false teachers among you, they will cleverly teach destructive heresies and even deny the master who bought them. In this way, they will bring destruction on themselves. Many will follow their evil teaching and shameful immorality. And because of these teachers, the way of truth, the narrow way, will be slandered.

In their greed, they will make up clever lies to get hold of your money. But God condemned them long ago and their destruction will not be delayed. The way of truth will be slandered. It's slandered today in the world. We're called prejudice.

We're called limited. We're called all these names because we say Jesus is the only way. There's no other way. He's the only way. The narrow way is the only way.

We're called a lot of. We're slandered because of that. But he says there's only two roads. There's only two gates. There's only two kinds of teaching.

There's good teaching and there's bad teaching. And he warns against bad teaching. He says it reveals something rotten on the inside. I remember when I was a little boy, I spend summers with my pawpaw on the farm. He had a 70 acre farm.

I loved spending the summers with him, my mother's father. And one day, at the end of a long, hard work day, it started raining. Kind of rained us out a little bit. So we went in. We were sitting on the front porch and it was raining.

He had a tin roof. Man, it was fun. We were sitting there with some iced tea, talking about the farm. It was really good. And then suddenly a bolt of lightning struck a willow tree in the front yard.

These two big willow trees in my grandfather's front yard. You couldn't put your arms around these things. They're probably 100 years old. They were huge. Struck it and half of it came right at the porch.

And we're like, whoa. And we ran in the house. My pawpaw did not like lightning storms. It scared us both. We ran in the house, but soon as the storm was over, we went outside to see the damage.

And that tree, that willow Tree that was that big around, that looked as healthy as it could be. It was completely rotten all the way through the center, filled with black ants, those great old big black ants. We're like, wow, it's ready to fall over. I mean, it didn't need a lightning bolt. It could have been a hard wind would have knocked it over.

You just never know. It looked healthy on the outside. It was like a wolf in sheep's clothing. It was diseased, it was rotten on the inside. And when the fire fell, it fell.

When the storm came, it fell. Don't be indifferent about who you follow. There's too much at stake. Eternity's at stake, not just for you, but for those around you that you carry burrs on your clothing and spread. Be careful about the teaching you embrace and the teaching you pass on.

You might even have the teaching right in your heart. But because you don't want to look bad in the culture, you want to be accepted. You say things you know better than to say. Follow faithful shepherds who bear gospel fruit and be one who not only believes right teaching but shares it in Christ. We can exercise spiritual discernment by recognizing the end to avoid the destruction.

Jesus ends this portion of the Sermon on the Mount with a serious word of warning. Not all who sound spiritual are safe. Wolves wear wool. Thorn bushes don't bear grapes, but they do inflict pain. Thistles don't bear figs, but they do pass along false messages that can hurt others.

And diseased trees, well, they get cut down and destroyed and burned. Are you spiritually discerning? Do you study God's Word so that you're like the Bereans and you know the truth from a lie? Do you measure what you hear by God's word and by the voice of Jesus? Are you a fruit inspector?

Do you? Take care. Don't be a passive follower. Be a discerning citizen in the kingdom. Let's stay close to the shepherd.

Know his voice, trust His Word, and when in doubt, bring it before Him. Let's pray. Lord, thank youk for your Word. Oh, we love youe Word, Lord Jesus, and we thank youk for it. And we are so dependent upon youn Spirit's guidance and interpretation and revelation to our hearts, so that we have heart change and we have life change.

And Lord, I pray for that person that might be in my hearing today that you've heard the Word and now it's the Spirit of Christ that's knocking at your heart's door, asking for you to consider becoming a child of God, a child of the kingdom. Would you do that right in your seat today? If you sense the Holy Spirit's call to you, would you say yes to Jesus today? Would you confess it? Say, dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner and I need a savior.

Just pray it right in your seat. He hears you. I believe you died on the cross for my sins and that you were raised from the grave. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin.

Make me a child of God. I want to follow you all the days of my life. You're praying that prayer faith, believing the Bible says you will be saved. Others are here today and you know someone that's fallen under the spell, as it were, of false teaching. Or maybe it's a teenager.

Maybe it's one of your children. Or maybe it's your mom or dad or an uncle or aunt or a friend, somebody. Would you pray for them right now and say, lord, I just pray you'd open their eyes to the false teaching, Lord. Help them to see the truth of Jesus. We pray it all now in Jesus name, Amen.

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