Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Give a talk on false teachers to a distracted school audience ranging from 6 year-old girls to 18 year old boys to teachers, whose weltanchauung (world view) disagrees with yours violently. Make it relevant, but do not offend anyone (read: do not claim anything). Try to tell them the good news of Jesus.

The text: Matthew 7:15-20

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Here’s what I said:

Spring has come at last, bringing all sorts of fruit for us to see and smell and taste. But eating the wrong fruit could be deadly. Coming to the end of his most famous sermon, Jesus warns us of false teachers. Why?

False teachers are not just classroom teachers. Jesus was not warning you about your maths teacher. False teachers are anybody who tells you something untrue. They hide the truth. They distort facts, leave out details, and invent lies.

Jesus called them wolves! Do wolves care for the sheep? Only as far as they can satisfy his hunger! False teachers are not interested in you. Their interest is in their self. They are motivated by money or fame or power or greed. They don’t care for the truth: they’ll tell you what you want to hear!
While a good shepherd will die for his flock, a wolf cares for them not

But you’ll say to me, Andrew, “they’re not that dangerous!”

They can be deadly! They are like a doctor who, rather than telling you about your cancer instead compliments you on your figure. Being diagnosed with cancer would turn your world upside down. You will cry, you might hate the doctor, but, in the end, you will live. The doctor who is more concerned about pleasing you, about avoiding conflict, will cost you your life!

But false teachers are even more deadly because of this: they resemble the good guys. Just as the inedible berries of thorn bushes resemble grapes, and the flowers of thistles resemble figs, so too do false teachers seem good. They might be pleasant and smile a lot. But get beneath the surface and they do not sustain life.

How, then, can you tell them? Jesus said “you can recognise them by their fruit”. As we have seen, a glance is not enough. But test their behaviour, their motivation, their attitude, their humility. But above all: test them for truth! Check what they say. Check what I’m saying even now!

One person, perhaps more than anyone else, attracts false teachers: Jesus. People love to claim him for themselves, as a hippy, a pacifist, a communist, a good person, or God and saviour.

Is the picture you have of Jesus the right one? Does it fit with what he said? Jesus said “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement but has passed from death to life.”

That is an enormous claim! A man who makes that kind of claim cannot simply be ignored. Does your picture of Jesus fit with a man who claimed to be God, who turned over tables in anger, who pointed the finger at false teachers, who talked of hell and spoke of a mission to save sinners by his own gruesome death?

Is that your picture of Jesus?

And did he really do all that? Don’t just take my word for it, find out for yourself by checking it out in the Bible.

Beware of false teachers – do not be deceived but test everything.

I’d post the audio but the recording device got stage fright and decided not do any recording.

There was oodles more that I wanted to say. What do you think? Agree / disagree? Leave a comment.

[For a much clearer, more detailed, more powerful, more applicable, and far, far better examination of these verses, check out John MacArthur's two sermons on "Beware of False Prophets" - sermons to which I'm totally in debt.
Audio  || Text of Sermon 1 || Text of Sermon 2  ]