Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Psalms 12-18
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 7:15-20
Jesus: Along the way, watch out for false prophets. They will come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath that quaint and innocent wool, they are hungry wolves. But you will recognize them by their fruits. You don’t find sweet, delicious grapes growing on thorny bushes, do you? You don’t find delectable figs growing in the midst of prickly thistles. People and their lives are like trees. Good trees bear beautiful, tasty fruit, but bad trees bear ugly, bitter fruit. A good tree cannot bear ugly, bitter fruit; nor can a bad tree bear fruit that is beautiful and tasty. And what happens to the rotten trees? They are cut down. They are used for firewood. When a prophet comes to you and preaches this or that, look for his fruits: sweet or sour? rotten or ripe?
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
There are a lot of false prophets out there now days. They were around in Jesus’ time, thrived during the days of the early church, and keep on truckin’ today. In fact, if I read my Bible right, they will be around until Jesus comes again. And guess where they do their best work. If you guessed in the church, you’d be right. It’s sad, but true.
They come in with all the right words. They look religious. They quote long passages of scripture to prove their point. But when you look at their lives, they are empty shells with nothing inside. No real life. Nothing to show on the inside that would point anyone to Christ and His truth. Yet many will fall for their flattering words and mystic sounding phrases and follow them anywhere. Just look at the number of people that followed Jimmie Jones and David Koresh. Those two made national headlines because of the scores of people who died because of their false teaching, but there are dozens like them that don’t get the mass attention but are just as dangerous.
The false teachers typically pick a verse or two and blow it out of proportion to the rest of scriptures. They hang their hat on those few scriptures and build a religion around them. Then work to convince the ignorant that everyone else is wrong. I did say ignorant and it has nothing to do with IQ. It has to do with whether or not you study God’s word. Not the flavor of the month the false teachers give, but God’s word. Dare the false prophets to use any other translation than their own and see what happens. See, the beautiful thing about God’s Spirit working in the lives of His servants is that all the legitimate translations I’ve every read, and I’ve read about 30 of them through from cover to cover at this point, all say the same thing about God, Jesus, His Son, salvation by faith, good works as a demonstration of faith, a final judgment for all people who ever lived, an accountability for our actions, eternal destinations for those who believe in Jesus as the way of salvation and those who do not.
Every single translation I’ve read says the same things about those essential elements of the Christian faith. Without exception. So when someone tries to introduce something that contradicts the greater voice of all those translations that survived through centuries of scholarly criticism, I question the single voice. Those false prophets will try to twist scripture the same way Satan tried to twist scripture in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The issue is, how do we discover the false teacher from the real thing?
The answer is simple. First, know the scriptures. Read God’s word and test what your teachers tell you. Go look it up for yourself. Put those thoughts and instructions back into the context of the whole Bible and the whole story or passage from which it came. Don’t let your teacher take a phrase or verse or two out of context and twist it around. Jeremiah 29:11 is one of my favorites for pointing out how we can twist scripture. It’s a great verse. Jeremiah gives the exiles a great promise from God: For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Eternal, “plans for peace, not evil, to give you a future and hope—never forget that.
What we seldom remember, is that God’s plans included continued exile for another 70 years, then only a small remnant of those who departed would return. Jeremiah wrote these words in around 570 BC. Israel didn’t have sovereign reign of their land again until the peace accords after World War II. That’s 2500 years before their future and hope of a sovereign nation came to fruition. So be careful what those prophets tell you. Go look it up! See what’s right! Listen to God more than you listen to man!
Second, look at the fruit of the teacher. Does he or she produce good fruit? Do you see the fruit of the spirit evident in his or her life? Do he have to fake it? Do his children tell you he’s the same person at home that he is at church? How does she treat those who work for her? Do you see good fruit there? How about at the grocery store and other places in public? Is he short with waitresses or does he treat them with the same gentle spirit you would expect from Jesus? What fruit do you see? It doesn’t take long for tree to show the kind of fruit it bears. Just look around and you’ll see it. Follow the good fruit bearer. You’ll be glad you did.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.