SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our Redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of voices in our world today who will tell you what to think and how to live, which makes Jesus call to be discerning and to be on our guard against false prophets, very timely indeed.
SPEAKER_00: That will be the focus of our service today.
SPEAKER_00: We'll begin our service with our opening hymn number 868.
SPEAKER_00: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Today's readings put me in the awkward place of having to preach a warning to you about myself and those who share in my line of work.
SPEAKER_00: The word that Jesus uses is beware, be on your guard.
SPEAKER_00: And the wariness he calls for has to do with preachers, with who you will listen to and who you might follow.
SPEAKER_00: I suppose we could boil it down to something as simple as this as this: that today Jesus says, be a choosy follower.
SPEAKER_00: And you just can't be too careful in this regard, because ravenous wolves do not come to you bearing their fangs.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, they come to you in sheep's clothing.
SPEAKER_00: That is, they sound wise and reasonable and smart, like somebody you would want to listen to.
SPEAKER_00: They know how to gain an audience and how to get things done.
SPEAKER_00: They tell you things that you want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: This is what a wolf in sheep's clothing does.
SPEAKER_00: And that sheep's clothing can be so convincing that it can even deceive the false prophet himself.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus tells us at the end of today's gospel this startling thing that there will be some who come before him on the day of judgment, saying, Lord, Lord, and expecting to be trumpeted and praised by God as they were trumpeted and praised by their followers here on this earth, and yet are self-deceived.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll find there on that day a rude surprise and a stern word waiting for them.
SPEAKER_00: Depart from me, workers of lawlessness, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: Now there is a clue for listeners as to what you should watch out for in the way that Jesus has these workers of lawlessness speaking.
SPEAKER_00: For as he depicts it, these workers of lawlessness are coming before the throne of God, and they are telling of what they have done.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, they say it was all in Jesus' name, putting that nice label upon it, and yet the accent is very notably on self.
SPEAKER_00: And surely you are all Lutherans enough to run up the red flag of works righteousness if you see somebody coming before God and proclaiming as the basis for their entrance into heaven the things that they have done, that should make us say, something has gone awry here.
SPEAKER_00: And it means that we should know well enough to be on our guard against a preacher who praises himself.
SPEAKER_00: We should consider it an unhealthy thing if a church spends a great deal of time proclaiming how many wonderful things the church is doing.
SPEAKER_00: We should know not to be taken in by much talk of grand success stories and glorious accomplishments.
SPEAKER_00: Because the work of the Spirit proceeds much more quietly than that.
SPEAKER_00: And this is reinforced by the word that Jesus uses to describe these wolves, ravenous.
SPEAKER_00: This sort of appetite that they have.
SPEAKER_00: Because a hungry wolf sees everyone as a potential meal.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not what you want.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when you are looking for a preacher, what you want is a preacher who recognizes his own emptiness and his own need and fills it with Christ, daily receiving his forgiveness, his grace, his peace, finding in Jesus his treasure, his all-in-all, everything he needs.
SPEAKER_00: You want a preacher who's filled to the full like that so that he won't be trying to fill some emptiness or need within himself by his preaching and by his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And the question to ask here that gets to the heart of the ravenous wolf is this What is this person trying to get from me?
SPEAKER_00: Now you want the answer to that question to be something like this.
SPEAKER_00: This person wants me to believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This person wants me to know and understand the word and to shape and live my life according to it.
SPEAKER_00: This person wants me to have the hope and the peace and the comfort of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you want the answer to be.
SPEAKER_00: But I know in my own heart how thin the line is between thinking, I want a sermon that feeds people with Jesus, and the thinking that says, I want a sermon that will feed my own ego.
SPEAKER_00: And have people on the way out of church telling me what a fine preacher I am.
SPEAKER_00: And once a preacher heads down that road, boy, watch out.
SPEAKER_00: Beware, be on your guard indeed.
SPEAKER_00: You have to be on your guard against a preacher who views you as a means to an end and not as the end in and of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And those ends might be various.
SPEAKER_00: It could be money, it could be the preacher saying, I don't want to ruffle too many feathers, I want to keep everybody happy so that they keep paying my salary and the offering dollars keep coming in.
SPEAKER_00: I think more often it's fame and prestige, a preacher who says, I want to use these people to build up the church and do something great that will have other pastors asking me, what's your secret sauce?
SPEAKER_00: And will get me invited to headline conferences.
SPEAKER_00: I suppose it could be other ends as well.
SPEAKER_00: In this regard, I think that we have a pretty decent ability to sense when somebody is only paying attention to us in order to get something from us.
SPEAKER_00: I think we can sense that.
SPEAKER_00: We can sense when care and attention is being paid, but really only to use us to get to some other end.
SPEAKER_00: Take that as a sign, a warning, as one of the fruits that would cause you to beware.
SPEAKER_00: Take it as a sign that perhaps here there is a sort of ravenous appetite that would betray the wolf hiding beneath the sheep's clothing.
SPEAKER_00: So the recipe that you want in a preacher goes like this maximum glory to Christ, minimal attention on self.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00: No, I've spent a great deal of time talking about how this looks in a church.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, I think it's important for us to broaden out this conversation and to acknowledge that in our world today, there are many prophets who are prophesying but do not operate under the title Reverend.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we call them content creators, lifestyle influencers, podcasters, and the like.
SPEAKER_00: But they're filling a prophet's role.
SPEAKER_00: They view it as their task to tell you what to think, what to buy, where to direct your dollars, how to live your life.
SPEAKER_00: They set before you paths that they promise will lead to wellness and flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: And as much as we all fancy that we're unique individuals cutting our own path through this world, the fact of the matter is that we're mostly all but followers.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that even someone who never comes to church has a preacher.
SPEAKER_00: The question isn't really if you're going to have a preacher, it's just who that preacher will be.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of the platforms that we use make this very obvious because they have a button that says follow this person.
SPEAKER_00: Subscribe to this channel.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' day, if you wanted to take in the teaching of a rabbi, you might have to literally follow that rabbi, dusty mile after dusty mile on the road.
SPEAKER_00: Today you click that button and the next podcast slash sermon will be automatically queued up for you to listen to.
SPEAKER_00: Which doesn't make it all that easy to be a choosy follower, especially when the algorithm is designed to feed you what you want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: So everything that I've said already can be applied to this kind of mass communication that comes to us in various forms, be it in print and a book, or in audio form, like a podcast, or in video form on any of those kinds of streaming platforms.
SPEAKER_00: First and foremost, the question that we have to ask is: is this person leading me to the Lord Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Or are they leading me away from my Savior?
SPEAKER_00: Is what this person's saying in keeping with God's word and the truth that it has given to me?
SPEAKER_00: Because we know that there are many things that sound wise and reasonable and good in this world, and yet nevertheless run contrary to what God has revealed to us in his word.
SPEAKER_00: That's always first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that you can ask the same question about motives here.
SPEAKER_00: What is this person trying to get from me?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that motive is not hidden in the least.
SPEAKER_00: The YouTuber who in the middle of the video says, Help me reach 100,000 subscribers, is clearly telling you that you are a means to their end and the fulfillment of their own goal.
SPEAKER_00: And when you hear, and now a word from our sponsors breaking up a podcast, it's a reminder to you that the podcaster wants your attention because the more people who are listening, the more ad revenue that podcaster brings in.
SPEAKER_00: Those motives are not hidden, they're fruits that are easy to see.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it seems to me that there is an added layer of complication when communication is done digitally or remotely, because there's distance and anonymity between the person that you're listening to and you yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Look, you might be listening to an online preacher, and you can learn a little bit about that preacher from the carefully curated content that is delivered to you in the video, but you can't actually know how that person lives his life when he steps away from the camera lens.
SPEAKER_00: And that can make it very difficult to recognize the fruits that might otherwise mark out a false preacher.
SPEAKER_00: And many people will tell you that they know what will be good for you, but they do so without actually knowing you personally.
SPEAKER_00: That is, somebody that you know only at a distance, mediated by a screen, cannot truly care for you as you, or know and understand the very specific joys and sorrows that are in your life and the burdens that you carry.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, nowadays you have to ask of any video that you see whether it's even real or whether it's been generated by AI.
SPEAKER_00: These kinds of complications seem to me to indicate the great importance of what happens in a relatively small congregation like ours, where we get together face to face, where there is no question whether what you are hearing and seeing is really happening or whether it's been generated by AI.
SPEAKER_00: More than that, what happens within our congregation is this great joy of getting to walk together with one another, of knowing each other personally, of sharing life's joys and carrying each other's burdens.
SPEAKER_00: That provides the best possible context for carrying out Jesus' command to be careful and discerning and choosy in who we're following.
SPEAKER_00: It's within a Christian church like this where you can actually know the preacher, and the preacher can actually know you.
SPEAKER_00: You can get a sense of his life and his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you can certainly go online and find better preachers and better sermons, more carefully crafted and polished and the like.
SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that it's far better to have this kind of context of shared life.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it seems to me that this is something that's going to be all the more important as this kind of divide between being able to know and understand what's real and what isn't grows more and more in our society.
SPEAKER_00: We have something here that is important and genuine.
SPEAKER_00: We have something here that souls that are feeling disconnected and lonely are searching for.
SPEAKER_00: We have the joy of gathering together in the flesh, face to face, of knowing one another.
SPEAKER_00: And that seems to me to be the best possible way that you and I can carry out Jesus' words.
SPEAKER_00: It's the place where you can look for a preacher who genuinely cares for you as you, who loves the Lord Jesus, who wants nothing more than to bring you to Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's my prayer that you find a pastor, a preacher like that.
SPEAKER_00: So there, I've carried out my duty.
SPEAKER_00: I have warned you about myself and those who share in my line of work.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be choosy followers.
SPEAKER_00: Let's listen to those who will lead us to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our Redeemer, a special warm welcome to our guests who are with us today.
SPEAKER_00: It's great that you joined us here.
SPEAKER_00: A couple of announcements.
SPEAKER_00: Our Thursday afternoon Bible study will be resuming next week, Thursday, August 6th.
SPEAKER_00: That takes place at 1 o'clock p.m.
SPEAKER_00: in the community room.
SPEAKER_00: All are welcome to attend that.
SPEAKER_00: So mark that on your calendars.
SPEAKER_00: Also, you're invited to stick around now for refreshments in our community room, as well as our summer Bible reading hour, where we're reading through the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: That'll begin in just a few moments.
SPEAKER_00: But before you head out, take a moment, greet those worshiping with you, and I wish you God's blessings on the rest of your day.