Recognizing False Prophets Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. In ancient Israel, false prophets put lies about God into the minds of God's people.

The same is true in our day. They diminish His holiness, exaggerate their goodness, and hide their real motives. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Today we continue a series on the church in Babylon, unleashing the power of a Spirit-filled witness. Pastor Lutzer, today you'll be taking us into Jeremiah chapter 5 to help us recognize false prophets.

Dave, I find it very interesting that you introduce this sermon in the way in which you did where you talked about the fact that false prophets tell lies, and they put those lies into the minds of people. I've written a book entitled God's Devil. It's really a biography of Satan's history. It talks about his fall. It talks about the methods that he uses. It talks about his end, how he will be eternally humiliated.

But I wrote the book to show that indeed, Satan tells lies, puts these lies into our minds, and gives us the impression that they are our own. I believe that this book will be of tremendous help to you. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours, and I need to emphasize that today is the last day we are making this resource available. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us.

You can call us right now if you wish at 1-888-218-9337. And now let us listen carefully as we think about lies, the false prophets, but behind them, Satan. When a nation is in trouble, or when you are in trouble, what you and I really need is a word, a message from God. And we need that message from God for a number of different reasons.

First of all, to find out what God is like, to find out what he has planned, and then most assuredly, to plan for the future, to find out what lies ahead. In the ancient city of Judah, this ancient city of Jerusalem in the land of Judah, I should say, in about 2,600 years ago, 600 BC, there was a prophet by the name of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was speaking the word very clearly to a nation that had forgotten God.

They were worshiping idols, they were into immorality, and they were feeling very comfortable in their sin. And so God anointed Jeremiah and said, Jeremiah, I want you to be a prophet to the nations. And so he told the people that the Babylonians were going to come and destroy their city, destroy their country, and they had better prepare, and they had better repent of their sin.

But the people didn't want to hear it. And so what happened is there were plenty of false prophets, false teachers, who said to themselves and to others, we have a better message than Jeremiah. Jeremiah, all that negativism regarding judgment, we know better than he does. And so Jeremiah had to put up with false prophets. In fact, the false prophets actually ultimately had him thrown into a well, and he was there persecuted by them.

Tell you what I'd like to do. In the next few moments, and thanks so much for joining me, is to talk about false prophets from the book of Jeremiah, also using contemporary illustrations, and occasionally going into the New Testament to help us to understand what is going on today. And I'm doing this for a very specific reason. When you're watching television and you see some of these false prophets on television, and not everyone who's on television is a false prophet or a false teacher, but there are many of them, that you will be able to recognize those characteristics and say, I see that he or she is a false teacher. We need discernment in this day of confusion. Listen to what God said about the false prophets of the time, and you can take your Bibles and turn to the book of Jeremiah.

There's a Bible there in the pew in front of you, and probably if you're in about page 633, somewhere along there, you would find the text that I'm going to be using. But the Lord says this regarding the false prophets. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed.

They did not know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall. At the time, I will punish them, and they'll be overthrown. What strong words to false prophets who healed the wound of their people too lightly. They taught the people that you can solve your own problem. You know, after all, you can do anything that you want to do.

You can authenticate yourself. Your sin really is no problem, and so what they were doing is basically putting a bandage over a cancer, thinking that the bandage would be able to heal the deep-rooted sore of the human heart. Now, what I'd like to do is to give you four characteristics of false prophets, then we'll talk about some good news. Now, some of you may say to yourself, well, you know, this doesn't seem very loving. For Jeremiah to make these very strong statements does not seem like the loving thing to do. May I tell you that love always tells the truth.

Love always is willing to confront, and that is the most loving thing that you can do. Jeremiah was a prophet who wept. He cried over the sins of the nation and over the things that he foresaw that was coming, the suffering that is absolutely incredible that we will talk about in the next couple of messages. But for now, false prophets. Turn to Jeremiah chapter 5, and you'll notice that it says this in Jeremiah chapter 5, and I'm beginning here at verse 12. They have spoken falsely of the Lord, speaking of the false prophets. They have spoken falsely of the Lord and said, He will do nothing.

No disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine. Jeremiah's message is wrong. It's too judgmental. It's too negative.

That's not going to happen. This is God's evaluation in verse 13. The prophets will become wind. The word is not in them. Thus, it shall be done to them.

Wow. That's God's view of the false prophets. Very quickly, notice that they diminish the holiness of God.

They diminish the holiness of God by saying, the Bible says, they speak falsely of the Lord. No disaster will come. God isn't going to judge us. The whole idea of judgment is out of vogue.

It's not the kind of thing that you do. As a matter of fact, everybody's going to heaven. In the end, everybody wins. Somebody said that we don't want a father in heaven. What we want is a grandfather in heaven.

A grandfather who watches the kids play, and even if they're mischievous, and even if they do wrong things, he enjoys it all. And at the end of the day, he says that a good time was had by all. That's the kind of God we want. So people today go God shopping because they want a God that is made in their image. So they have the God of self-authentication. They have the God of health and wealth. They have the God of my sexual preference.

Whatever it is that I want, God becomes that to me. That's not the biblical God, and God said some harsh things about prophets who say such things. So the first thing is they, of course, diminish the holiness of God, and they exaggerate the goodness of human nature. They exaggerate the goodness of human nature.

They tell humans exactly what they want to hear. By the way, your Bibles are open to chapter 5. Notice what it says here in verse 30, an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.

The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction. My people love to have it so. But what will you do when the end comes? The goodness of human nature. You don't have to change. You don't have to confront your sin. It is more important that you be healed than that you be holy. And so people begin to believe that I'm okay, you're okay, you're okay the way in which you are. Somebody said we have cows for milk, we have goats for cheese, we have sheep for wool, and we have God to come along and to confirm all of our desires. That's the kind of God we want. The Bible says that God created man in his own image, and now man creates God in his own image.

Whatever I want God to be, that's who God is. And so what you have is the exaltation of human nature. There's a false prophet on television who garners a huge audience, who tells his people things like this, we have been born for earthly greatness. In fact, what you should do is to imagine in your mind prosperity and wealth, and if you have these clearly in your mind, thinking about them and speaking the right words will bring them about. You have power within yourself to do all of these things, just think it. And so you have the power of positive thinking.

No emphasis on sin, no emphasis on the need for forgiveness, nothing like that. All that you need to do is to think it, the power of positive thinking. Now there is some power in positive thinking. Do you remember that little engine that went up the hill and said, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

All of its optimism probably helped it, but if it got to the top of the tracks and the tracks were washed out, the top of the hill, it wouldn't matter how often it said, I think I can, I think I can. And folks today, human nature is basically sinful. Now there's a good part to us too, we can both do good and evil. You know what Jeremiah says about human nature in chapter 17, he says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? And the very next verse is, I the Lord, try the heart. Do you realize that as you are listening to this message today, that God knows exactly what your thoughts are. He knows exactly what your thoughts were last week, what you thought of this morning. God knows the human heart. He knows us better than we know ourselves because there are things about us that we don't want to admit. God knows them. Pascal, the great French philosopher, mathematician, had some wonderful things to say about human nature.

By wonderful, I mean very accurate. He says that man retains an image of God, but he is plunged into the misery of his blindness and lust, which is his nature. So there's a part of man that can do good. One day I was watching television and seeing the news and here was a story about a woman who went about with an SUV full of groceries, helping the poor.

And the very next story was a terrible story of a woman who had been brutally assaulted. And I thought, what a contrast. Yes, we retain the image of God and therefore we can do good, but there's also that part of us that is sinful and that God knows about. And false prophets come along and tell us that we're really wonderful people and all that we need to do is to try harder and surely God is going to accept us. That's false prophets.

So that's the second thing. They exaggerate human ability. Let me give you a third characteristic and that is that they have various sources for their knowledge. Now, actually, I'm in the 14th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah where God says this about false prophets. And the reason that I'm asking you to turn to different passages is really because the fact that all throughout Jeremiah you have references to false prophets. In fact, chapter 23 almost exclusively is devoted to false prophets.

Maybe we'll have time to read a little bit of that as well. But this is what it says in chapter 14 verse 13. Then I said, oh Lord, behold the prophets say to them, you shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place. And the Lord said to me, the prophets are prophesying lies in my name.

I did not send them, nor did I command them to speak. They are prophesying to you. And now here are three different sources of their prophecies. First of all, a lying vision.

You often see this on television, don't you? The most bizarre thing can be attributed to God. And if you question it, somehow you are questioning either the Lord's anointed or you are questioning this prophet of the Lord in a way that is going to be detrimental to you. Years ago, I watched some of these false prophets because I wrote about them. One false prophet said, speak to your wallet and tell it to be full of money. I mean, really?

This is incredible. Another false prophet on one occasion said, oh, I'm just having a revelation. There are actually nine members in the Trinity.

Wow. And everybody, really? During Luther's time, there were false prophets also in northern Germany. And there were those who were having these special revelations, you know, all about God and all about these things.

And you know, in the New Testament and so forth, the Holy Spirit is represented as a dove. So Luther sarcastically said, I will not accept their prophecies even if they have swallowed the Holy Ghost feathers and all, he said. So God says that one source is lying visions. Notice the second is worthless divination.

That actually is occultic. Yes, it is true that one of Satan's most dazzling deceptions is to have people speak and they think that they are in contact with the living God and they are actually in contact with demonic powers. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament says this very, very clearly. Listen to what he says there in the book of Second Corinthians, where he talks about false teachers. Second Corinthians chapter 11, verse 12.

And what I do, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission, just that boasted mission, this will become important in a moment, they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of darkness.

No. For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So does no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

Wow. You see people on television today who say that they have the power to be able to touch people and they collapse. You know, to be slain in the spirit that this man is so holy, he has so much power that if you come under his spell, he'll give you some of his energy, some of his God ordained energy, and he touches people and they collapse on the platform. Somebody who was a part of the movement did a study of all those who collapsed on the platform to see whether or not it gave them any spiritual power and concluded that there was no measurable difference between them before and afterwards.

They were still the same people dealing with the same sins. And yet the thought is that this man has so much spiritual power. I have to tell you, there's no doubt and I don't want to name anybody. There's no doubt that I have watched television and I can see that there are some people you can almost notice it in their eyes that they are demonized people, but they use the name of Jesus all the time.

And you say, well, how can that be? They're using the name of Jesus. The Apostle Paul in this very same passage in 2 Corinthians says that they were preaching another Jesus. There are all kinds of Jesuses out there. There's the Santa Claus Jesus. There's the Mormon Jesus.

There's the God of your fantasies Jesus. And so they proclaim Christ, but not the Christ who is crucified for our sins, not that Jesus. It's a different Jesus. And we don't know exactly what Jesus they were presenting there in 2 Corinthians, but notice this. The Apostle Paul believed that it was so much like the real Jesus that he feared that the church in Corinth could not tell the difference. And we're living at a time when there are so many Jesuses out there and unfortunately many Christians cannot tell the difference.

It's heartbreaking. Jeremiah says that that's another means is worthless divination. And then he says the deceit of their own minds.

I'm still there in chapter 14 verses 13 and 14, the deceit of their own minds. Basically, what false prophets do is they look at their desires and after they look at their desires, what do they do? They fashion God after those desires.

I wish we had time to look at this in more detail, but you know that in the New Testament in 2 Peter as well as Jude, there's a reference there to false prophets who follow their own desires. And so they look within and they say, I want to do this, that or the other thing. And so God comes along and becomes to them everything that they want. And as a result of that, they are led into great sin.

You know, the Bible is very clear that God says, I am that I am, the Lord says, and not who you want me to be. So that's another way in which false prophets get their particular wisdom supposedly made up in their own minds. There's a fourth characteristic and that is they hide their true motives. They hide their true motives.

Now, the scripture is very clear about this in the New Testament. This is the expression that is used for false prophets. It says they are trained in greed, trained in greed. My heart just absolutely breaks when I get to this, because what you see false prophets do is they are making money.

They encourage you to send money to them, and this money is supposed to become seed money that'll garner you a big harvest. You know, this past week, I was thinking about one false prophet who's on television regularly who encourages people to send $1,000 to him. Now, he never tells you how he's going to use $1,000. So I saw on the internet that there was a man there who is looking at some papers to verify the fact that this man was worth about $14 million, money that had been sent in, and if you ever see him on TV, he is powerful. He is even scriptural sometimes, and he will tell you that if you send me money, God is going to use this as a seed, and you are going to get a great harvest, and you are going to be wealthy and be able to pay your bills. Many years ago, there was a false prophet on television who told people this, and I saw it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. He said, if you send money to me, your mortgage will be miraculously paid.

You're going to get a letter from the mortgage company saying that your house has been paid for. Do you believe that? Well, my friend, I certainly hope that you don't believe that.

There's so much deception out there. I need to say that when it comes to the ministry of running to win, we make no guarantee that you are going to be especially blessed in return. What we do emphasize is that every dime is invested to get the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible. Today is the last day we're making a resource available to you that I think will be of tremendous help. I want you to find a pencil because I'm going to be giving you some info that you should write down, and I hope that you will respond to it right away. The name of the book is God's Devil.

What's unique about the book is the fact that it emphasizes the sovereignty of God and how Satan even does God's bidding today. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember, this is your last opportunity, the last opportunity that we are making this book available. RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can call us right now, 1-888-218-9337.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. The true prophets of God get their message from God Himself. False prophets draw their false messages from a variety of sources. Next time, how to spot those sources and determine whether what you're hearing is from God or from somewhere else. Thanks for listening. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.