I wonder if you remember the old children’s cartoons. Characters chasing each other, round and round a lamppost, knocking down the china, wacky races in their cars, Tom and Jerry. Ingenious and slapstick ways to trick or trip one of the other characters so that you get ahead, catch them in the neck of a bottle, or whatever it is.
One of my favourites manoeuvres was the road sign switch. At a road junction is a great big sign that says “this is the way to go”. So someone comes up and points it down the other road, which goes straight over a cliff. And remember, if you’re in cartoon world, you’ll come to no harm if you run over a cliff, provided you don’t look down.
That’s the world of children’s cartoons. At once clever, witty and I never tire of them.
As we near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns us of road-sign switches in the real world. Only it’s not so funny. In cartoons you run over that cliff, look down, whistle your way to the bottom, only to cut to the next scene which is round 2. In the real world, we bruise more easily, and really big falls are fatal.
Two Paths through Life
What am I talking about.
Well in cartoon-land, the road-sign switch happens at a road junction. One road is the way the runner or the car wants to go. The other way leads straight to the precipice.
If you were here last week, you’ll know that we are in the closing section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has finished laying out who he is and what it means to follow him. He now urges his hearers to respond. To take the path he’s laid out. To follow him in the way he’s just described.
And in last week’s passage, Jesus set out the two ways we might go through life. The two gates we might go through. One road is to follow Jesus. He never said it would be easy. In fact, he said it would be hard. But it leads to life. Knowing Jesus. And a future when everything wrong is undone. When we will see God face to face and be like him. When nothing will be sad or spoilt any more. Life itself.
The other road is the way of the majority. It’s easy. It appears to be free of trouble. But it leads to destruction. It’s the road to hell.
Which means that, as we sit here listening to Jesus urge us to follow him, we are at a road junction. We’re faced with a choice. Two ways open up before us. We must choose which way we will go.
But what if someone came along and turned the signpost around? The sign labelled “way to life” now points firmly down the broad path which has destruction at the end.
That, says, Jesus, is precisely what happens.
Beware of false prophets
Verse 15: Beware of false prophets.
A prophet is simply someone who speaks on God’s behalf. Who speaks up in public, to tell other people what God has to say.
Jesus warns us that not every prophet is a true one. There are false ones as well.
Just because someone says they are telling us God’s words, it doesn’t mean that they are. There are also false prophets – people who claim to be telling us God’s view on things, but actually are saying something quite different. People who will tell you that the way to follow God is other than it is. People who will switch the signposts.
What do they say, and why?
What will these people say, and what motivates them to do so?
Well, motivation is a tricky one, because it will vary. Jesus doesn’t say that every false prophet means to mislead people. They may be very well intentioned. But consciously or subconsciously, Jesus does tell us what drives these people.
The first clue we get comes from the two roads. The two gates. The misleading signpost. The false prophet is the one who tells you that the easy road to destruction is actually the way to life. So maybe they’ll tell us that there aren’t really just two ways. “There are a whole range of different ways through life, and they are more or less successful. It’s not as black and white as a choice between life and death.”
Or maybe they’ll tell us that following Jesus won’t be difficult. “You can follow him on the broad and easy path as well. There’s no need to make hard moral decisions in your life. There’s no need to face the mockery, the dislike, the mistreatment from others.
“That area of your life that some people say Jesus wants you to change. He doesn’t really. You can follow him and carry on living like that if you want. It’s fine.”
And so we’re offered a different Jesus. A one who doesn’t make demands of us that we won’t want to accept. A one who won’t cause us any trouble before others. But who will still get us to heaven.
Sheep’s Clothing
The next thing Jesus says makes this even more worrying .False prophets will be really hard to spot.
We could continue talking about road signs, and say that the road sign that’s pointing the wrong way does a really convincing job of looking like a real road-sign.
But that’s beginning to stretch that analogy. So let’s use the one that Jesus uses. The wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Pretend for a moment that you are a sheep. Up comes another very friendly sheep. It wants to play. It wants to feed next to you. It wants to be your best friend.
Only it’s not a sheep. It’s actually a wolf. It really wants to eat you. It’s just dressed up like a sheep to get close to you. If it looked like a wolf, you’d never trust it, and it would never get its dinner.
That, says Jesus, is how false prophets look. They look just like sheep.
If you’re anything like me, you have trouble feeling the force of this because you start to think of pantomimes and the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We picture a comedy wolf, unconvincingly wearing a few bits of fleece to try and disguise itself. The sheep in our pantomime naively trusts this rather obvious wolf. It has to, or the story wouldn’t progress. But that’s part of the joke. It’s the dramatic irony. Because we can all see it. We’re all crying out “boo” and “he’s behind you”.
But that’s the opposite of Jesus’ point. We mustn’t picture a wolf, wearing a comedy disguise. Because then the answer would be to open our eyes more widely. No, we must picture a wolf who actually does look like a sheep,. The disguise works.
On the stage at the pantomime are ten sheep. One of them is really a wolf in disguise. But until the wolf pounces and bites, we in the audience would have no idea which one it is.
False prophets don’t wear T-shirts that say “truth is boring, try something novel”. They don’t wear black and white striped clothing to make them look like an Everton mint. They look and sound… just like true prophets.
Which means they will wear whatever respectable Christian teachers wear in your neck of the woods. If it’s a dog collar, they’ll wear a dog collar. If it’s full Anglican robes, they’ll put them on for you. If it’s a suit and tie, you get false prophets garbed that way too.
The language they will use is the language used by Christian teachers down the centuries. Expect lots of talk of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Trinity, the Scriptures, the cross, the resurrection, the Bible, grace, mercy, peace, and love.
Their books will be for sale in Christian bookshops that you often buy good resources from. They’ll be invited to speak at conferences and conventions that you enjoy going to.
They will look and feel like the genuine article.
But inwardly they are ravenous wolves. They want to feed on the sheep. They feed themselves at the sheep’s expense.
We’ve seen how the sheep suffer. Point the signpost the wrong way, and it’s time to tumble over a cliff into destruction.
But they benefit. As long as people buy their books. As long as people are pleased when it’s their turn to preach. As long as they have a group around them who think they are the best thing since sliced bread. Then they’re doing well for themselves.
So they will say what they must say to remain popular. That’s because they, too, are on the broad and easy path. Not only is their disguise convincing. They are also greatly loved and popular teachers, because that is the secret of their success.
By Their Fruit
So how do we tell? If they are so well disguised, and yet so very dangerous, how can we see through that disguise?
Jesus tells us by painting one more picture. Verse 16: You will recognise them by their fruits. Verse 20: Thus you will recognise them by their fruits.
Verses 16 to 20 tell us how we can tell. Look at their fruits.
What does he mean?
He’s picturing a fruit tree. In verse 16 he says that the type of tree determines the type of fruit. You don’t get apples from a pear tree. You just don’t. Or as Jesus puts it, you don’t get juicy grapes, nice things, from a thorn-bush, a nasty tree.
In verse 17, he says that the quality of tree determines the quality of fruit. If the tree is healthy, the fruit will be good. If the tree is rotten and diseased, the tree will be bad. And verse 18 turns that on its head. You don’t get bad fruit from a healthy tree. You don’t get good fruit from a rotten tree.
And then finally in verse 19 he explains how the fruit tells the gardener what to do with the tree. It is so much the case that the fruit shows what’s going on that it’s what a gardener would use to judge the health of the tree. If the tree is producing diseased and rotten fruit, the tree goes on the bonfire.
So trees produce fruit. The fruit will tell you the type of tree, the health of the tree, and whether the tree should live or come down. So prophets produce fruit. And that is the place to look.
The question is: What does he mean? What is this fruit?
I think he means two things.
Firstly, he means a person’s lifestyle. This is not the only place in Matthew’s gospel where fruit is used as a picture of the way you can see what’s going on in someone’s heart. On each other occasion it is clear that the fruit is a person’s lifestyle.
Are these prophets really sheep? Are they real followers of Jesus? You can tell by the way they live.
We’re not asking if they’re perfect. We don’t only trust teachers who make no mistakes.
No, we’re in the Sermon on the Mount, so we should let that tell us what a true follower of Jesus looks like. Do they know their imperfections and long to be better than they are? Are they peacemakers? Are they willing to be persecuted for Jesus’ sake. Do they submit to the whole of the Bible – Old Testament as well as New? Do they often get angry with people? Are they lustful? Do they lie, or break promises? Do they get their own back. How do they handle people who don’t get on with them?
Is their devotion to God a showy thing, praying impressive prayers for you to notice? Or are they quietly dependent on God, such that you’d almost never know they prayed, whilst you never doubt it? Do they take their own sin seriously, or just enjoy finding fault with others? Do they treat others well, the way they’d like to be treated?
Again, this is not about perfection. No fruit tree only produces unblemished fruit. It’s about fruit. Are these fruit on the tree? Does this teacher show these kinds of traits?
The way this picture of fruit is used elsewhere would suggest we should look at their lifestyle.
There’s another way we could look at this, though. We could look at their fruit, as prophets. As teachers. As ministers. So we ask: What’s the fruit of their ministry?
This isn’t always easy to tell. Christian ministry is not always successful. Sometimes, you can point people to Jesus but they don’t want to follow him.
But when someone’s ministry is successful, what does that success look like?
To change the picture, if you want to know about a factory, you’d want to know what roles off the production line. What comes out the other end?
So with the Christian minister. What comes out the other end? When someone responds positively to this person’s leading, teaching and discipleship, what have you got? What have they grown?
Do you get followers of Jesus? The kind the Sermon on the Mount leads us to expect. Humble, God-trusting, neighbour-loving, heart-affected people. Or do you get something quite different?
The fruit of their ministry?
Either way, you look at what this person’s life results in. Their fruit. Is this a disciple of Christ, leading others to trust and follow him? Or not?
It may have struck you that you have to know someone quite well to recognise their fruit like this. That’s most certainly true. The less well we know someone, the slower we should be to trust their teaching.
Today
It’s funny in the cartoons when they turn the sign-post round and Wiley Coyote goes over the precipice. It’s not funny in real life when those who point people to Jesus are actually pointing in the wrong direction. It’s not funny, because the precipice isn’t funny.
This was enough of a problem in Jesus’ day that he had to warn his hearers. There are similar warnings in the rest of the New Testament, so this remained pertinent for the next 40 years. And church history bears out that the relevance of this has never gone away. It’s as much a warning for our own day.
It’s sobering for me to read this. It’s hard to preach a sermon having read it. What if I should stand up to speak and misrepresent Jesus? But it’s not really here for that.
This has been used to spark witch-hunts. Should this minister be sacked? Should this book be banned? Can I build up a blacklist of people I don’t trust? It’s not here for that either. Please don’t use these words of Jesus in that way.
This is here for ordinary Christians like you and me, who need to be more discerning than we realise. Not all that glistens is gold. Not everyone who tells you about Jesus tells you about Jesus. We must not be gullible or naïve.
But we must also avoid the opposite error. We mustn’t be paranoid into trusting nobody and allowing no-one to teach us anything. Because Jesus tells us quite clearly how we can tell who is a real prophet Their fruit will show us.
We stand today at the junction of two paths. One leads to life. One leads to destruction. This day Jesus calls us to follow him on the road to life. We just need to be discerning. When we hear people tell us how to walk on that road, we need to make sure that is what they are doing. And then we follow Jesus on the narrow way that leads to life.