Page 39 - Demo

Kingdom Foundations: House on the Rock
Matt 7:15-27
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, attended a church not far from the White House on Wednesday nights. To escape attention and scrutiny, the preacher, Dr. Gurley, allowed the president to sit in his study with the door open to the sanctuary so that he could listen to the sermon without being noticed.
One evening while walking back to the White House, a friend asked him what he thought of the evening’s sermon. “Well,” Lincoln answered, “it was brilliantly conceived, biblical, relevant, and well presented.” “So, it was a great sermon?” the companion responded. “No,” Lincoln replied. “It failed. It failed because Dr. Gurley did not ask us to do something great.”
This story reveals an important dimension to every sermon. A sermon fails if there is no invitation to respond by doing something different with your life based on what you heard. Any sermon, no matter how eloquent or engaging or well researched or biblically based, without a call to respond by living differently, is just another form of entertainment, something we listen to for a little while to pass the time and relieve the boredom.
It should be no surprise then that Jesus ends His most famous sermon with a call to live life differently. He challenges His listeners to be cautious who they listen to and be careful they aren’t deceiving themselves by failing to hear His teaching and act on them.
Don’t Let Others Mislead You (vv. 15-20)
Jesus warns His followers to be aware that other people will try to deceive them. These false teachers appear to belong but their hearts reveal something else. The proof of whether or nothing someone is a false prophet is not whether they know the right words or teach things that sound pleasing. Jesus says, “You will know them by their fruit.” What they produce reveals who they are.
Jesus issues a similar warning in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” In this passage He calls false prophets “thieves” and describes how to spot them. A thief is a person who uses subtlety and trickery to deceive people. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. These 3 verbs describe the motivation of a person who is a thief/robbery.
• A Thief Takes Things: “a thief comes...to steal” – A thief shows up at your house because you have something they want. A thief sees a thing and believes he is justified in taking it. A thief might act kind and gentle and loving, but he is motivated by his desire to take from you what he wants. His primary goal is acquisition.
• A Thief Uses People: “a thief comes...to kill” – Because a thief’s goal is to get things for himself, he ends up dehumanizing others. A thief turns people into things to be used to get what he wants. They are expendable. The most extreme view of human life being expendable is to kill somebody.
• A Thief Makes Messes: “a thief comes...to destroy” – A thief doesn’t care about you or your house. He barges in and takes what he wants. While he is looking for the valuables, most thieves make huge messes. Why? Because they don’t care about anything other than what they are looking to take.
In addition to being aware that false prophets exist, we also need to mindful of why false teachers are so attractive. In 2 Timothy 4:3-4 Paul issues the following warning to Timothy: “3 The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside
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