As we saw at the beginning of these studies in the Sermon on the Mount, it was an utterance of the most stirring kind, one in which Jesus unburdened His heart, holding nothing back. This is the Gospel of the Kingdom, the good news of God's rule breaking into life: this is what Jesus came to give the world. Only let God be to you all that He is for you, and this is how life will be.
Now as Jesus moves through these last three parables, the Two Ways, the Two Trees and the Two Houses, the intensity grows to a climax which is reached in v. 22. Only long familiarity could dull our ears today to the staggering thing Jesus there says. I shall keep it till last.
He has been pouring out truth. But He knows that truth can be twisted to promote ends it was never designed to serve. It can be used, in fact, where it should be done! As the devil used Scripture to tempt Jesus, so the very words of Jesus can be manipulated so as to lead us astray. Hence Jesus says: "Beware!" It is precisely those who love the truth who may most easily be led astray by those who manipulate it for their own ends.
We have seen already that the door that leads to life is a narrow door, and the way it opens to us is a narrow way. How shall we find our way to the door? Who shall guide us? There are so many, like guides competing for custom at a tourist attraction, who are ready to press their services on us. "I know the way," they all cry, "let me be your guide." There are many 'remedy-mongers' in the stalls of this 'vanity fair' we live in. How do you tell a good guide from a bad one? We need to know. The hunger for truth is a precious thing in us, one of the most precious; Jesus is concerned it should be truly met, for He knows how easily our hunger will drive us to buy what is not bread.
The experience of passing through that narrow door into life is, as we saw, one of the most intensely personal and private things that ever happens to us. The secret things must be revealed ... and handled, and we must be sure of the hands into which we surrender them. Woe to us if we yield ourselves up to unskilled, or worse, unscrupulous hands.
"In your search for truth, beware!" Jesus warns us.
We sometimes wish that folk were not so cautious in their response to the Gospel we preach. But that caution springs in part from a right instinct. The Gospel touches the deepest springs of our innermost selves. Can we trust it? We do not want to be messed about with. Nor does Jesus want us to be messed about with. That is why He warns us, "Be careful whom you trust."
So again we ask, "How do you tell a false prophet from a true one?"
• Not by his teaching!
A man you cannot trust may sound all right. He says, "Lord,
Lord" in all the right places, and does it all in the Name of
Jesus.
But he is not to be trusted. He is not really one of Jesus'
men.
• Nor by results!
False prophets can cast out demons, and even do many mighty works,
and all in the Name of Jesus! But they may still not be among Jesus'
men, and we should not trust them.
I remember going with a member of my congregation once to a faith healer. He was so well respected that he ran a clinic at one time on the premises of a Public Hospital with the full approval of the hospital authorities. Folk had been healed of asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis and even cancer. My friend suffered from spondylitis, and gained relief from the man's ministrations. He wanted me to meet him, so I went. Without a doubt there was a power in the man's touch. He was not what we would call a charismatic at all, but I saw folk swoon at his touch the way they do when they are 'slain in the Spirit.' He always began his sessions with prayer, and the prayer sounded all right to me. He seemed to be exalting Jesus, and asking to do everything in the Name and by the power of Jesus. He invited me to share the laying on of hands with him, and I did. It was a strange experience. There was no doubt the muscles in my friend's back moved spontaneously under his touch, but I felt 'drained' somehow of vital energy by it!
He invited me to supper with him afterwards, and there he told me that he was attending spiritualist seances at that time where, by laying hands on the spiritualist medium, he was able to alleviate the neck pains of a man now dead who had been hanged for murder! I thought, "'Curiouser and curiouser,' said Alice." So I worked the conversation round to the test that John in his first letter (4:3) taught us to use, and asked him did he believe that Jesus of Nazareth was truly God manifest in human flesh. I have rarely seen so swift a transformation in a man. He lost all his suavity and began angrily to deny it. Jesus was the "Master of the Halls of Learning on the Other Side," he told me, but he vehemently denied that He was truly divine. I afterwards learned that the woman who assisted him in all his ministrations was a woman he lived with to whom he was not married.
He did works of power, no doubt about it. But he was a false prophet.
What Jesus here warns us against, we must understand, is not false teaching, but false men. It is not sound doctrine that counts, but sound living. The question to ask is not, "Does he preach the truth?" but "Does he live it?"
"You will know them by their fruits," Jesus said, and it is fruitage in the life He meant. "Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?" Of course not. Heads shook in the crowd with a knowing smile as Jesus asked the question. There are thorn bushes in the East that produce a berry the size and colour of a grape, but you only had to taste it to know it was not a grape. The one sickened, the other refreshed you when you ate it. It is possible too for a wolf to wear sheep's clothing; what he cannot do is to grow wool on his back! "Even so," said Jesus (vs. 18-19), "a sound tree can't bear bad fruit, any more than a bad tree can bear good fruit." "Is the man and his ministry all one whole?" we should ask. Does the combination of ministry and man nourish things good in us?
It is worth observing that there are two words for 'good' in the Greek, and in v. 17 Jesus uses both. "The tree," He says, "is agathos - good; the fruit is kalos - good." Agathos means good in the sense of sound, true, genuine; kalos means good in the sense of lovely, having a winsomeness in its wholeness. In other words, Jesus says that if the tree is sound its fruit will be beautiful.
If we are looking for the real thing, the 'genuine article' in our search for truth, we should look for it in the wholesomeness of its outcome. We should not be fooled by its outward appearance, nor taken in by show or sensation. How does it taste? The man to whom we listen ... does his ministry nourish love and joy and peace in us? Patience, goodness and kindness ... are these apparent in him? Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control ... is there a touch in his ministry that stirs these things in us? They are the test. Is what the preacher has to offer something planted by God, the God of Grace, in him? When the mask is off, is there a merely human impulse to be observed in him or is there a divine constraint? Is there a fire in his bones that God has kindled there? Is the whole package - life and teaching together - of God?
Now we have reached the point where we can appreciate the sudden surprise Jesus sprang upon His hearers that day.
We might very well understand all this to mean that Jesus was here supplying a standard by which we may evaluate preachers. Certainly He has done that; and we preachers must stand or fall by His Word. But something happens at this point in the sermon that is quite unexpected. It is in vs. 21-23: "On that day many will say to me ... and then will I declare to them ..."
Jesus Himself emerges from behind His words at this point, and presents to the hearers, not His message, but Himself. "On that day, many will say to ... Me!" He says. We miss the dramatic impact of this change to the first person because we merely read His words centuries later. But if we had been in the crowd that day listening while He actually preached it, our ears would have pricked at this point. "Hey!" we would have thought, "He's talking about Himself!"
We have said more than once that we do not hear this Sermon rightly till we hear it as from the lips of Jesus Himself, speaking directly and personally to our soul. The things He says are not true in the sense that aphorisms are true, or philosophical propositions. They are true only because He speaks them. Until we remember who it is who says these things to us, we miss the point of them.
Now at last Jesus comes right out into the open, and calls attention to Himself in what He says. Very plainly, He is saying: "Look, it is I with whom you have to do. It is not rabbis, it is not preachers I'm really talking about; it is myself. The central issue of your life is all tied up with me. All that will matter in the end is whether you are known to me."
"The Father has committed all judgment to the Son," as He said in John 5:22.
"It isn't even what you think of me that will matter in the end, but what I think of you," Jesus is saying. "'Who do you say that I am?' is not the only question to be asked. There is also the question, 'Who do I say you are.' Everything in the end will depend on whether I recognise you as one who really came to me, who truly opened your heart and life to me, who actually fell into step with me on life's pathways, and walked with me, our two hearts open to each other. If that has happened then the Last Great Day will hold no terrors for you. We shall come to it together, you and I, as familiar friends."
So it does not matter all that much whether you think of me as a true or a false prophet; it does not even matter what I think of myself. (o Paul: I Cor. 4:3-4) What matters is whether we both really present ourselves to Him, humbly, brokenly - sin, falsehood, self-doubt, failure and all - and say to Him, "O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee!"
He is the true prophet, the only prophet we can trust absolutely. His is the only life that bears all the fruits. No man is any sort of prophet at all who does not speak His words, with His accent, so he himself sinks out of sight behind the Christ whom he puts forward.
Christ alone is the bread of life on which we may feed and grow. He only is the wine of life of which we may drink and live. He Himself - born, crucified, risen, living and enthroned for us - is the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth.
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