Tuesday


Tuesday

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?  Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.   – Matthew 7:16-20

It is not always easy to discern truth from error.  The Bible tells us that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15).  We must always be thoughtful and prayerful before we accept or reject the teaching of others.  A former mentor of mine in ministry once told me that he used the following 3 simple questions whenever evaluating the truth of a teacher’s message.
1.    What do they say about Jesus?
2.     What do they say about the Gospel?
3.    How does their life match up to their own teaching?

In the passage above, Jesus says we should evaluate teaching by what it produces. That is, what is the outcome of this teaching?  What happens in the lives of the people who follow this guide?  (Not the results. Not just the immediate outcome, but the long-term outcome.)  How would God judge it?

One of the key ways Jesus gives us to tell the difference between a teacher who is genuinely teaching God’s Word and one who is falsely claiming to teach God’s Word is by their “fruit”, their lifestyle.  Does their life support their claim to follow Jesus?  Do they themselves obey?  Be wary of spiritual leaders who live by different rules than the rules that apply to everyone else.  For those of us who teach and/or preach God’s Word, we should be continually asking ourselves this question; am I living the kind of life that I am teaching others to live?

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.    – James 3:1

Does this mean we must have perfect obedience to communicate God’s truth. Thankfully, No.  No one is perfect.  If this were the case, there would not be anyone left to speak truth.

However, this is why a significant moral failures often destroy a pastor’s or a leader’s ability to preach or lead a church.  Almost anyone can put on a good act. But no one can hide forever. Someone’s true character eventually comes out in their actions.

Without a doubt, the best way to guard yourself against falsehood and false teachers is to know the truth!  To spot a counterfeit, study the real thing.  FBI agents who work in the counterfeit dept. spend countless hours studying genuine American currency before they can begin to spot the clever counterfeits.  They become experts in spotting the fakes because they know the real thing so well.  Any believer who “correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15) and who makes a careful study of the Bible can begin to identify false teaching.

If you want to dig deeper on this issue, you might want to study those books of the Bible that were written specifically to combat false teaching within the early church: Galatians, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, and Jude.

Father in heaven, you are the god of all truth and the author of our salvation.  Help us to immerse ourselves in the truth of your word so that we can discern truth from error.  May your truth be lamp to our feet and a light to our path – Amen.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, it never occurred to me that the "good & bad trees" were referring to TEACHERS per se, following on the verse before it... I guess I always heard the tree verses taken out of context and standing alone, and applying to all people - like we are to judge our neighbors according to their fruit (when we shouldn't really be judging others!). So, I'm seeing now that the judging is appropriate, in this case, because of that higher standard that you mentioned from James 3?

Anonymous said...

I don't see anything in the message that talks of judging others. Our Lord does not mince words, and he has already told us that we are not to judge. I think we are being taught how to tell the difference in teachings so that we seek the truth; just like we choose what books to read we should choose biblical teachings that accurately represent God's word. After all what we let in does influence our own thoughts and actions.

Pastor Jeff said...

We should be careful to distinguish between judging another person's heart and judging the content or truth of their teaching. Of course God is the only one fit to judge the heart, because he is the only being in the universe with the infinite knowledge, goodness and justice necessary to make such judgements. However, the Bible does tell us that we are to have a discerning mind and heart when it comes to truth.

John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Pastor Jeff