LutheranLectionary.org

1 Year Lectionary – Eighth Sunday After Trinity – Sunday, August 7, 2022 | Pr. Chris Rosebrough

Welcome to the Teaching Ministry of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church. Kongsvinger is a beacon for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of Northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone, and now, here’s a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrough:

Time Stamp	Transcript
0:22	The holy gospel according
0:29	to saint matthew the seventh chapter [Music]
0:38	jesus said beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves you’ll
0:45	recognize them by their fruits are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles so every healthy tree
0:52	bears good fruit but the diseased tree bears bad fruit a healthy tree cannot
0:58	bear bad fruit nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and is
1:05	thrown into the fire thus you will recognize them by their fruits not everyone who says to me lord lord will
1:10	enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven on that day many will say to me
1:17	lord lord did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name
1:22	and do mighty works in your name and then i will declare to them i never knew you depart from me you workers of
1:29	lawlessness this is the gospel of the lord in the name of jesus
1:34	all right there’s a couple of days in my life i will never forget one of them is the day of the space shuttle blew up all
1:40	right i was a senior in high school and when space shuttle blew up i was in the library at our school studying for a
1:46	final exam and somebody came in and said the space shuttle just blew up and we
1:51	thought he was joking but it turned out that wasn’t a joke it legitimately happened the other one is 9 11. i
1:58	remember very very vividly watching being glued to the television waking up
2:03	in the morning and looking at my news feed on my computer and seeing seeing that one of the towers had been
2:11	struck and then turning the news on watching as the news was covering the the the twin
2:18	tower incident at that point it had only been one tower that had been struck and then very very vividly i remember
2:25	watching the video feed as the second plane hit the second tower
2:31	and the first words out of my mouth were we’re at war
2:37	you cannot see violence like that and that attack of that kind and not
2:44	think that you’re at war because you are but i would note we christians we often
2:49	times forget that we are at war the devil is waging war against the
2:55	saints we read in the book of revelation in chapter 13 that the devil conjures up
3:00	two beasts to wage war with the saints that’s their purpose first beast is a
3:06	political beast the second one is a religious one it says i saw another beast rising out of the earth this is
3:12	revelation chapter 13 verse 11. it had two horns like a lamb but it spoke
3:19	like a dragon it exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence makes the earth and all of its
3:25	habits inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed so
3:30	think of it this way one of the big mega weapons that the satan has employed on
3:36	the battlefield in order to wage war against christ and against the saints against the church and against the
3:41	gospel is false prophets that’s how this goes and the day in
3:48	which we live it is politically incorrect to speak about christianity as
3:54	being the one true religion you talk like that and people going to
3:59	accuse you of being closed-minded of being bigoted
4:04	of being hate-filled of being arrogant how how do you know
4:11	do you think you’re better than everybody else this is how they talk right
4:16	but i would remind you all the category of true prophet false
4:21	prophet true teacher and faithful teacher of god’s word and false teacher these are taught by us by god in his
4:29	words christ himself says in our gospel text beware of false prophets they come to
4:36	you in sheep’s clothing inwardly they are ravenous woes you’ll note the
4:42	apostle paul in his farewell address to the pastors of the church in ephesus he said to them pay careful
4:50	attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the holy spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of
4:56	god which he obtained with his own blood i know that after my departure fierce
5:01	wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise men speaking
5:09	twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves and that’s what false teachers and false prophets
5:16	do they draw away disciples after themselves they teach unique doctrines
5:21	that are unique to them they teach heresies they speak words in the name of god that god hasn’t given them to speak
5:28	and christ says you’re going to recognize them by their fruits and sadly
5:34	in our day and age too many people within the visible church hear these words of christ you will recognize them
5:40	by their fruits and somehow think that this merely has to do with how they
5:45	conduct their lives as long as they haven’t been caught up in a major sex scandal or haven’t been caught
5:52	embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their congregation then they must be
5:58	bearing good fruit but where the place they’re supposed to be looking is what they’re preaching
6:05	and what they’re teaching and i would note that in the old testament in the prophet isaiah chapter
6:11	57 it specifically talks about our worship and our praise and the way in
6:17	which we talk about god as being the fruit of our lips
6:22	so no pastor gets a pass i don’t get a pass because the
6:30	enemy works from within within the visible church you’ll note that christ
6:36	says that false prophets they come in his name and they’re wearing sheep’s
6:41	clothing in order to deceive they don’t come dressed in a red union suit with a
6:47	red pitch fork and horns that’s not how they come to us they come to us instead
6:53	dressed just like us sounding like us to a point but you’ll note that even in the
6:59	book of revelation it talks about the lamb who has the voice of a dragon pay attention it’s the dragon’s voice that
7:06	you’re listening to to distinguish between a true prophet or a false
7:11	prophet christ asks are grapes gathered from thorn or figs from thistles
7:17	no so every healthy tree then bears good fruit but the diseased tree
7:23	bears bad fruit and i can say this without any exception and i mean this
7:30	every single person that i have covered in my time doing fighting for the faith which is almost 15 years now
7:38	every person claiming to be a prophet claiming to hear the voice of god every
7:43	single one of them without exception is incapable of rightly handling god’s word
7:49	and it’s easy to spot them because they constantly twist it all up
7:54	and yet they claim thus saith the lord the lord told me this thing or the lord told me that thing or the lord has
8:00	revealed to me that we are in a season of breakthroughs and that you should expect a kairos blessing to
8:06	hit your bank account and you get the idea right not a single person who claims to be a
8:13	prophet have i found that when you apply the fruit test listen to their teaching that any of
8:22	them passes they all only bear bad fruit
8:27	and teach false doctrine so every healthy tree bears good fruit the diseased tree bears bad fruit healthy
8:33	tree cannot bear bad fruit nor a diseased tree bear good fruit and every tree that does not bear good fruit it is
8:40	cut down and thrown into the fire and thus you will recognize them by their
8:46	fruits and christ here talking about them being thrown into the fire these false prophets their fate is hell
8:52	make no make no exceptions here this is absolutely the case these false prophets
8:59	they will not be with the saints in glory in the world to come
9:04	they will be with the dragon in the pit of hell
9:10	for all of eternity for their blasphemies for their idolatries for their deceptions for the despising of
9:17	god’s words in fact christ says not everyone who says to me lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven but only the
9:23	one who does the will of my father who is in heaven and this is where we should pay attention to jeremiah
9:29	let me give you a little bit of the background here it’s always good to get a little bit of the context jeremiah is speaking about
9:36	false prophets speaking to them but the words that he’s been given here he didn’t concoct them himself they didn’t
9:42	arise within his own heart these were words given to him by god directly
9:47	jeremiah practically took these words down via dictation that’s what we know about the prophet
9:53	jeremiah and the big context here is that several kings or two kings before he
10:00	became a prophet there was a king by the name of manasseh and this guy waged a
10:06	campaign a war against biblical judaism
10:12	absolutely waged war against it and one of the things that he did is that he’s
10:17	the one who took over the worship in the temple of solomon itself
10:23	and he set up in the temple of solomon images to false gods like ashira and
10:30	ba’all and people engaged in the worship of molech and starry host of heaven and
10:35	all of the pagan gnostic deities of egypt they were all
10:41	brought in to the temple there and to make matters even worse
10:46	because the gnostic world view is all about monism not dualism
10:51	the idea is to get away from the dualities that exist within this creation and get back to a singular
10:58	reality where we recognize that we are the same as god
11:03	it’s an interesting religion altogether so because of that one of their sacraments was homosexual sex and they
11:10	set up a brothel with male cult prostitutes in the temple of solomon
11:16	itself and where were the levites where were the prophets of god
11:23	well if you know your torah then you know the levites were tasked with the job of instructing the people of israel
11:30	and judah in the torah in the word of god and we learned from the prophet jeremiah
11:37	that the priests were in on it the levites were going along with it
11:42	basically saying it doesn’t matter which deity you worship we worship yahweh we
11:48	worship ashira we worship molech we worship you get the idea right so the
11:54	priests were in on it and they were affirming all of these radical changes and where
11:59	were the prophets what were they doing they were telling the people despite what the word of god says and the very
12:07	condemnations that god has given that they would stand in judgment of god if
12:12	they didn’t repent of their idolatry the so-called prophets stood up and said the lord has told us no disaster will befall
12:19	you don’t listen to that guy jeremiah who says that god’s going to bring the babylonians and nebuchadnezzar and that
12:25	jerusalem is going to be laid waste he’s lying we speak nothing but peace and
12:30	prosperity and love and hugs and kumbaya right
12:36	but who was right were they right or was jeremiah right
12:42	well history has borne out the fact that jeremiah was absolutely telling us the truth it’s important to note that
12:49	in today’s version of gnosticism gnosticism is alive and well by the way gnosticism the
12:55	gnostics today in some of their books they claim that this time when jeremiah
13:00	was prophesying where there had been well these false images these false deities
13:06	set up as part of the worship in solomon’s temple they the gnostics today claim that that’s actual true judaism
13:13	and there’s a fascinating book that was written by one of these gnostics called when when god had a wife
13:21	and so what they teach today they basically teach that christianity
13:26	and monotheistic judaism are aberrations that they’re dangerous that they’re evil
13:32	and that true judaism yahweh had a wife and they embraced not only the divine
13:37	masculine but the divine feminine and then everything boils back down to sex and fertility and crops growing and
13:44	things like this it’s very fascinating when you read all this stuff but the reality is is that
13:50	the gnostics have got this dead wrong their claims that there is a divine feminine and that god has a cohort or
13:58	that yahweh needed a wife and and it’s funny is the mystics uh in
14:03	later centuries talked about this thing as the shekinah so if you ever hear any mystic talking about the shekinah that’s
14:09	the secret code word talking about the divine feminine right
14:14	all of that being said this is the world into which jeremiah is speaking and the words that he gives are
14:21	true because none of his words fell to the ground the very judgments that god promised if judah wouldn’t repent were
14:28	the very judgments that took place and very few roughly
14:34	5 000 and some change of the people of judah made it
14:39	alive out of nebuchadnezzar’s sacking of jerusalem and they went into captivity just as jeremiah said they would
14:46	jeremiah’s prophets prophecies were true so speaking into all of this jeremiah
14:51	says thus says the the lord of of armies yahweh sava oath do
14:57	not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you filling you with vain
15:04	hopes note that god is not indifferent to false prophets god is not lacks when it
15:11	comes to false teachers he wills according to this prophecy that people
15:18	do not listen to them in titus chapter 1 god specifically says that he wills that
15:25	false teachers be silenced we are to hear god’s voice not the
15:31	raving lunatic nonsense of people who are mad who’ve gone crazy and who are
15:37	spiritually corrupt god says don’t listen to them they fill you with vain
15:43	hopes they speak the visions of their own minds and they are not speaking from
15:48	the mouth of yahweh they continually say to those who
15:53	despise the word of the lord it’ll be well with you and everyone who stubbornly follows
16:00	their own heart they say no disaster will come upon you a bunch of liars
16:09	that’s the point out goes the wrath of god out goes sin
16:16	repentance the forgiveness of sins bearing fruit and keeping with repentance and walking and conducting
16:22	your life according to the commands of god in fact these people were stubbornly
16:30	refusing to repent worshiping false gods sin you know and
16:35	they did it synchronistically they it was called syncretism they they would oh of course we worshipped yahweh but we
16:41	worship these other deities as well and in the time of jeremiah sexual immorality was running a muck
16:48	in jerusalem because of course it was people were not living their lives according to the word of god injustice
16:56	and thievery and oppression of people who were poor was also just at an all-time high it sounds a lot like the
17:03	world that we live in and where were the so-called prophets of god saying oh it’s all okay you’re the bee’s knees you just
17:09	need to confess these words i am blessed i am rich i am you get the idea right
17:17	but what they weren’t hearing was the message of repentance or they would
17:23	reject it outright and these false prophets were just scratching itching ears
17:28	but those ear scratched ears well those folks ended up under the wrath of god
17:34	god then asked who among them has stood in the council of yahweh to see and to hear his word who has paid attention to
17:41	his word and who has listened behold the storm of yahweh wrath has gone forth a
17:47	whirling tempest and it will burst on the head of the wicked the anger of
17:52	yahweh will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart and in the latter days you
17:59	will understand it don’t let these people deceive you god will punish sin
18:05	if you will not repent and be forgiven then you are going to have to give an
18:10	accounting of your own trespasses and pay the penalty in full
18:16	that’s the point and they said they go well we live in a day what don’t you think it’s a little narrow minded a
18:21	little old-fashioned a little bit old-school to think that god has wrath i mean come on
18:28	we’ve all grown up watching the care bears and we know that everything’s about rainbows and unicorns come on
18:35	right but god does have wrath and if you don’t believe me then look at
18:42	christ suffering on the cross the only sinless human being who walked
18:47	the planet he bore your sin he suffered the penalty that you and i
18:55	deserve and boy did he suffer a horrible ignominious
19:02	scandalous death he had his back opened with a cat of nine tails before he was nailed to the
19:08	rough wood of the cross and there for six hours he languishes having a hard
19:13	time breathing having to pull himself up in order to breathe having all of that blood gushing out of him with every
19:20	breath it was excruciating pain pain in his arms pain in his back pain
19:26	to breathe he even needed something to drink and in the midst of all that he cried
19:32	out my god my god why have you forsaken me
19:39	and indeed he was forsaken but here’s the thing he was forsaken so that we would not be
19:46	he suffered the wrath of god it was burst over his head so that would not burst over yours or mine
19:54	and true preachers that are sent by god they are to preach the whole counsel of
20:01	the word of god which requires them to preach law and gospel sin and grace
20:06	repentance the forgiveness of sins and the life empowered by the holy spirit
20:12	and bearing fruit and keeping with repentance and obeying the commands of god
20:17	but false prophets do not preach this message instead the result of their preaching is utter lawlessness
20:25	and that’s the truth take a look at the elca look at what they did back in 0 8.
20:33	it’s interesting to note that the current presiding pastor of the american association of lutheran churches dr
20:40	kerry larson he was there in minneapolis when they were going to
20:45	make the vote about whether or not to ordain homosexuals and he stood on the ground he stood at
20:53	the platform and he begged do not depart from the word of god
20:58	and he was told we are going to do the new thing that the spirit is telling us to do and calling us to do
21:08	the spirit wasn’t telling them anything in fact the spirit was speaking through cary larson on that day calling them to
21:16	repent of the wickedness that they were about to engage in but they wouldn’t and where’s the elca today
21:24	in some woke liberal gutter they can’t even call sin sin anymore but
21:31	all of us are capable of this that is lawlessness that is the very thing that
21:37	false teachers lead you into give you a soft pillow keep you comfortable while
21:44	you’re on your way to hell god says i did not send these prophets yet they ran
21:50	i didn’t speak to them yet they prophesied if they had stood in my counsel then they would have proclaimed
21:55	my words to my people and they would have turned them from their evil way and
22:01	from their evil deeds and there it is ah the fruit the fruit is there god is teaching us
22:08	how to inspect the fruit of teachers if they do not turn people away from their evil deeds but make them comfortable in
22:14	their sin and help them increase in their lawlessness they are false
22:19	teachers they are false prophets and don’t think for a second that this only has to do with people out there let me
22:27	remind you that each and every one of us have a false prophet living inside of us our old sinful adam
22:35	our old sinful adam says oh you go ahead and enjoy that sin god’s not gonna care
22:42	you have a false prophet speaking to your heart today inside of you
22:48	and i have that same false prophet speaking inside of me so no there are false prophets all over
22:55	the place but there are also false prophets within within the church within our own psyche and our hearts
23:03	so god asks am i a god at hand declares the lord not a god far off can a man hide himself in secret places so that i
23:09	cannot see him no do i not fill heaven and earth and indeed god does i have heard what the
23:16	prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name saying i have dreamed i have dreamed how long shall there be lies in
23:24	the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies who prophesied the deceit of their own heart who think to make my people
23:30	forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another and boy isn’t that
23:35	always the case as soon as you start chasing after these fresh words of god
23:41	these fresh encounters these signs and wonders and experiences the word of god
23:47	falls by the wayside and becomes almost silent
23:53	you don’t believe me go to sid roth’s it’s supernatural
23:59	just watch a few episodes and ask yourself this question
24:04	where did the word of god go what did they do with the word of god
24:11	god’s words make no appearances but all their claims are this is the new
24:16	thing that god showed me i went up to heaven and i saw that in heaven there’s a body parts room and you can pray and
24:22	god will send down body parts and heal people and stuff like this it’s all the delusions of mad men and mad women
24:33	and the result is they no longer hear the voice of god these false prophets prophesied the
24:39	deceit of their own heart to make people forget his his very name this is exactly what
24:46	israel did when they went after but all so let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream but let him who has my word
24:52	faithfully speak my words and there’s the word faithfully it’s
24:57	important word because there are people who do not faithfully preach god’s word they manipulate it they twist it they
25:04	make it void they hope they saw off all the hard edges in
25:09	order to make it so that it doesn’t offend a single person i remember the late walter martin
25:16	he used to talk about the false teachers on tbn and how they would always laud
25:22	the love of god the love of god the love of god and he said that they would never say a negative word and he said they
25:29	were so sweet and they were so kind he says that butter wouldn’t even melt in their mouth
25:35	right and when challenged about this he said those very words while being interviewed
25:41	on a tbn program one of the co-hosts a female looked at him and says
25:48	don’t you think you could say that with a little bit more positivity right
25:54	right and because and she said jesus was really kind and
25:59	he was all about love wasn’t he and walter martin famously responded and
26:04	it was beautiful to watch if you could see the video of it it’s fantastic he beautifully responded he says so you
26:10	believe that jesus is love incarnate do you not well of course i do well let me read to you the words of love incarnate
26:18	woe to you scribes and pharisees you whitewashed tombs right and he went on in that litany that
26:24	christ condemns them yeah you you you search high and low you traveled long distances to make a disciple and when
26:32	you’re done with him you make him twice a disciple of hell than you are that’s love incarnate speaking
26:38	christ was a repentance preacher you’ll note that he faithfully speaks the word of god to us
26:44	so what does straw have in common with wheat nothing
26:50	if you think about it nothing and jeremiah here by the words of god is comparing the false prophets to those
26:57	who are trafficking in straw good luck eating that it’s not a good
27:02	meal for us right but those who speak the truth they speak words that edify us that
27:09	build us up that feed us that’s the wheat so god asks is not my word like a fire
27:15	indeed it is and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces indeed it is and anybody who
27:21	wields this word that doesn’t break the hard-hearted rocks of our sinful hearts
27:26	with the word of god is instead teaching and preaching things to you to scratch
27:32	your itching ears and to not offend you but i would warn you the world that we live in the big
27:37	offense that you can do right now is offend somebody i’m offended by what you
27:43	said i’m turning you into the facebook police they’re going to put you in facebook jail for 30 days how dare you
27:50	offend me by speaking truth and what do we do a lot of us are
27:56	tempted to kowtow to the pressure to not offend have you ever stopped to think that
28:02	maybe the one you should be worried about offending is god himself
28:07	i think god is offended by our cowardice i think he’s offended by our inability
28:12	to find and speak the truth he’s offended by our unwillingness to
28:18	say the words of god because well
28:24	we could get in trouble we could offend somebody offend them
28:30	offend them but don’t offend god because he is offended by our cowardice the scriptures
28:36	make it very clear on the day of judgment in the book of revelation cowards are the first thrown into
28:43	the lake of fire it seems like i got a little b in my bonnet doesn’t it
28:48	yeah so brothers and sisters false prophet sunday
28:55	it’s real it’s a real threat we’re at war let us repent
29:01	of all our participation in the false teachings and the false
29:06	prophecies of those who are telling others that there is no judgment that there is
29:12	no harm coming to those who persist in their sin and their unbelief who engage and rank idolatry and blasphemy and let
29:19	us see that we have not only participated in it that our sinful adam our sinful nature also raises its voice
29:27	within us and joins its voice to this chorus of false prophets and false teachers
29:33	and daily we must repent but know this rather than casting the word of god
29:39	aside which we ought not to do even though it hurts to look into the mirror of god’s law and
29:46	to see that we come up short and it’s a painful experience indeed it’s meant to be that despite all of that god doesn’t
29:52	give us just one word in his word he gives us two the law is given to condemn
29:58	us and rightly so but christ and the gospel are given in order to comfort us
30:04	and to assure us of god’s great love and his mercy so the if you listen to the word of god
30:10	even though it crushes you christ will build you up with confidence that he has forgiven you that he is he has made you
30:18	alive in him he has washed away your sins he has declared you to be justified
30:23	in him and rather than having the wrath of god in your future
30:30	instead you have the peace of god in the inheritance that he is promised and gives us by grace through faith
30:36	we are foolish to cast the word of god aside because there is no greater comfort than the comfort that comes from
30:43	the word of god that tells us our sins are forgiven for the sake of christ the false teachers always tell us god’s not
30:50	going to judge us but the real teachers tell us that we will be judged if we persistence in an unbelief and that
30:56	christ has been judged in our place there is no comfort
31:02	and it is a delusion to say that god will not act in wrath he will but it is also
31:08	more true that those who are in christ are forgiven and they will not face the
31:14	wrath of god because god has done what we could not do by obeying the law
31:19	perfectly in our stead forgiving us of all of our sins by christ’s death on the cross and then clothing us in his
31:25	righteousness we dare not depart from the word of god this message is faithful and is true and
31:32	not a single word of god will ever fall to the ground nor can god’s word be broken
31:37	so again let’s repent of breaking the first second and third commandments which we do all too frequently and all
31:45	too easily and let us again only hear the faithful words of scripture the
31:50	comforting assuring words that we are forgiven for Christ’s sake in the name of Jesus amen

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