Matthew 7:15-20

F. THE DANGERS FACING THE WISE AND GODLY MAN

(Matthew 7:1-27; Luke 6:37-49)

6. THE DANGER OF BEING LED ASTRAY BY FALSE PROPHETS.

(Parallel: Luke 6:43-45)

TEXT: 7:15-20

15. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves,
16. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17. Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit
18. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

What are the logical premises back of Jesus-' warning against false prophets?

b. Does the sheep's clothing disguise of the false prophet refer to his character or his doctrine? or both? How do you know?
c.

Why do you suppose Jesus chose the particular test of a false prophet that He did?

d. If a corrupt tree cannot bring forth g d fruit, how do you explain the good deeds that appear in the lives of obviously wicked men?
e.

Is Jesus making a precise and unvarying observation in Matthew 7:18, or is He making a relative, general statement which may admit of some exception?

f.

Jesus speaks of burning fruitless trees, but He means men, of course. Do you think it is right that God should destroy any of His creatures? If so, why? If not, why not?

g. When Jesus spoke of every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, about whom was He talking? Is this a specific or a general reference, i.e. only to false prophets, or to men in general?
h.

Do you think that Jesus-' mention of burning corrupt, fruitless trees is a threat? Explain.

i. Do you think that Jesus-' disciples should be afraid of false prophets if their manifest intentions are such that they may be described as hungry wolves? If so, in what sense should they fear them? If not, why not?
j. Why do you suppose that Jesus repeated the principle test of a false prophet (By their fruits ye shall know them)?
k. Do you think that we, as the flock of God, are in danger of infiltration by false prophets today? What makes you think so? Are there many false prophets around any more?

PARAPHRASE

Watch out for false prophets: they will come to you under the guise of sheep, but at heart they are savage wolves. You will recognize them by the fruits of their lives. People do not gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, do they? Well, every good tree yields good fruit, but the worthless tree bears bad fruit. A good tree is as incapable of yielding bad fruit as a worthless tree is unable to produce fine fruit. Every tree that fails to bear fine fruit is cut down and burned up. That is why I say: you will recognize them by what their lives produce. A good man produces good things from the good stored up in his heart, and a wicked person brings forth evil things from his own stores of evil. A man's words will generally express what fills his heart,

SUMMARY

False leaders will hypocritically attempt to infiltrate the flock of God, but their overall conduct will give them away. Character and conduct are the final tests of any life and the surest test of any false leader, Though motives many times can never be known, the clear evidence of one's deeds is a sure indication of the nature of his heart.

NOTES

How is the narrow gate and the right way (Matthew 7:13-14) to be found? The transition, therefore, is a natural one from the two critical ways from which to choose, to the guides who propose to lead the disciples. Judgment is necessary, therefore, to discern between true prophets and false,

Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets. (Cf. Deuteronomy 13:1-5; Matthew 24:4-5; Matthew 24:11; Acts 20:29-30; Romans 16:17-18; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 2:4; Colossians 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12; Titus 1:10-11; 2 Peter 2; 1 John 4:1; 2 John 1:7-11; Revelation 2:2; Revelation 19:20; examples: Acts 13:6-12; 2 Kings 13; 1 Kings 22:5-23) A false prophet is any teacher of false doctrine or any teacher who falsely or unjustly claims divine inspiration with a view to authenticate his pronouncements. He pretends to deliver a message from God but really say what is pleasant to his hearers and profitable to himself, (Romans 16:18; Galatians 6:12-13; 1 Timothy 6:3-5; 2 Timothy 3:1-17; Titus 1:10-16) There is no practical difference between a false prophet and a false teacher, since the one pretends to reveal God-s word, while the other pretends to expound and apply it. Jesus-' word adequately applies to both (Galatians 1:6-9). What are the presuppositions behind Jesus-' warning against them?

1.

Error is possible in religion: there is such a thing as objective truth and falsehood or error. (Matthew 15:1-20; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Acts 18:24-28; Acts 19:1-5; Acts 17:16-34)

2.

Error does matter, because false teachers lead men away from the truth which saves. (Cf. Matthew 12:30-33; Matthew 10:24-39; Matthew 15:13-14) They constitute a very grave danger to the individual Christian because they can cause him to lose his soul; they are a peril to the corporate body of the Church.

Who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. Why mention wolves disguised as sheep? Because it is the nature of such hungry wolves to devour sheep, he is pictured as resorting to this trick in order better to gain the confidence of the flock until it is too late to foil his design through discovery of the ruse. Jesus describes the wolves as ravening, i.e. rapacious, hungry to the point of madness. Thus, He gives His judgment upon the real intent and character of the false prophet. The man about whom Jesus is talking is not a simple, self-deceived innocent Christian whose apprehension of the true doctrine has gotten twisted. The disguise is deliberate; the intention was destruction.

Matthew 7:16 By their fruits ye shall know them. In this brilliant changing of figures, Jesus describes the false prophet as a tree whose fruit betrays his real nature. He could have continued the first metaphor by saying that a wolf betrays his real nature when he starts attacking the sheep and eating them. But that figure would not have been adequate to convey other points of comparison that will be brought out later, so He changed.

By their fruits: not by the leaves of their professions, pretensions or appearances, but by the actual outcome of their lives. (cf. Hebrews 13:7) By their fruits alone will we know them. Not by suspicion or hasty judgment, but by actual fruit, and this takes time to mature. Therefore, it requires patience in the fruit inspector. There is no room in the Lord's vineyard for over-zealous heresy hunters.

But what are the fruits which identify the true nature of the man? What are those things the observation of which tell us about the man?

1. The character of the man's personal life. (Galatians 5:19-23; James 3:12-18; Matthew 12:33-36) Does his morality promote lascivious living, self-indulgence or the condoning of sin? Is his mind carnal, i.e. wedded to this earth. this life? (Cf. Matthew 23:1-3) What is the influence of his habits, company, conversation and attitudes? One might be teaching true dogma, while the fruit of his life be entirely rotten underneath an exterior of respectable orthodoxy. This is a practical test which is most easily and readily applied by any one who has a proper sense of judgment, A man's character is more telling than his doctrine many times because of the intricacies of his theological position that are not so easily traced. One's religion, however held or taught, must stand or fall according to the ethical result it obtains in those who profess to embrace it. So, if his religion makes him partial, spiteful, hateful, immoral, it is false regardless of all protestations to the contrary, Marshall (65f) notes:

It is sometimes objected that such an idea (i.e. that right acts are no sure proof of good character) is flatly contradicted by Jesus-' words here. But Jesus is thinking of conduct as a whole, conduct so extended as to cover the whole man, with all his actions, words, motives and thought, conduct as the natural and inevitable expression of man's very nature, like the fruit which a tree bears because it can bear no other. The whole point of the illustration which precedes this utterance of Jesus is that without a good tree there can be no really good fruit ,.. so a good character is essential to genuinely good conduct.., If a man is not morally good, it is only by the merest accident that he ever does what he ought.

2. The doctrine of the man's message. A man may be morally sound through and through, and yet the fruit of his doctrine, when logically worked out in the lives of others, produce vicious consequences. What are the results of his preaching? (Cf. Romans 16:17-18; 1 Timothy 1:3-7; 1 Timothy 1:19 b, 1 Timothy 1:20; 1 Timothy 4:1-7; 1 Timothy 6:3-5) What is the character and conduct of those who follow his teaching? Therefore, test both the doctrine and the teacher by the fruit which each produces, as well as by their apparent consistency with Scripture. But, in practice, one's character affects his teaching and -his doctrine affects his character. So, if a man is morally right but teaches doctrine that is false because of his ignorance of the Word, he may be corrected, for he has a conscience and desires to do the Lord's will. But a man whose character is rotten does not need new information, but repentance. If he will not, he is all the more dangerous. The case that Jesus assumes in this section, of course, is that of the ravening wolf who would hide his real character with intent to deceive and destroy,

Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Jesus-' Greek sentence begins with a negative participle (meti) which expects the question to be answered: No! In demonstration of His proposition, Jesus asks two humorous rhetorical questions which put the truth in a more striking form and arouse more attention than if stated simply in an affirmative form: Just imagine people going out to a briar patch to pick grapes, or taking their basket to a clump of thistles expecting to find figs! By this illustration, Jesus is saying what every observer of nature knows: every plant produces according to its kind. Grafting and plant improvement do not enter here, because Jesus is talking about plants in general without reference to the various ways the nature of their fruit can be changed. By mentioning these four plants, grapes, figs, thorns and thistles, He says that any plant is known and valued on the basis of what it produces.

Matthew 7:17 Even so introduces the point of the rhetorical questions: every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. Two trees of the same species may be identical in every respect but the maturing of the fruit reveals their true nature. This general rule is completely applicable to all men, even though the immediate application in Jesus-' mind is to the false teachers. It is to be noted that false teachers are to be judged, as Lenski (303) observes: not according to some exceptional rule pertaining to them only, but according to the universal rule which applies to all.

Matthew 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Just as it is impossible for a natural tree to produce fruit that is contrary to its nature and condition, so it is really impossible for a false prophet to masquerade for very long. His true character, evidenced by his conduct, will eventually betray him.

At this point, Luke (Luke 6:43-45) inserts his parallel, however without any direct reference to false prophets, thus proving the universality of the test that Jesus gives. Luke, however, points out that, although conduct is a sure test, however, it is often a much slower one. When a man opens his mouth. whether he intends it or not, he gives himself away. Whatever is hidden in the heart, good or evil, will come out in one's speech. A man's words, especially when he is unconscious of them, are a fairly secure indication of the nature and condition of his heart. (Cf. Matthew 12:33-36)

However, as McGarvey (Matthew-Mark, 72) cautions, even some good trees have occasional bad fruit, making it necessary to remember that Jesus is talking a b u t the obvious general tendency of one's life and not of occasional good or bad deeds, (Titus 1:15; 1 John 3:4-10)

Matthew 7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. (Cf. Matthew 3:10; Luke 13:6-9; John 15:2; John 15:6; Titus 3:14) Failure to serve positively in Jesus-' name is sufficient grounds for His condemning us. (Cf. Matthew 25:41-46; Note on Matthew 7:12) This warning is apparently more general than the single application to false prophets, but as a reference to them it serves notice to others not to follow them lest they too share the same fate. The blind who follow blind leaders, when they fall into the pit, land just as hard as their blind guides! (Matthew 15:14)

Matthew 7:20 Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Cf. Matthew 7:16) Even if this seems to sum up all that Jesus has to say in this section about false prophets, and even if He repeats for emphasis and clarity the primary test by which they are unmasked, yet this transition verse passes Jesus-' argument from false prophets to those who ultimately prove themselves to be false disciples (you who work iniquity).

FACT QUESTIONS

1. What is a false prophet? Is he the same as a false teacher? If not, what is the basic difference? If there is a difference, would it change the teaching Jesus gave here?
2. What is intended by the figure of the animals? Who are the sheep whom the disguise is supposed to fool? What is suggested about the real nature and intentions of the false prophets?
3. What is the test that will de-wool the wolves?
4. What are the fruits by which false prophets betray themselves as such?
5. What is the natural principle behind the mention of grapes of thorns and figs of thistles?

6. What is the tree that Jesus is talking about? (Matthew 7:17-19) Are these various mentions made of the same tree or of various trees?

7. By saying that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, does Jesus mean to imply that a Christian cannot sin? Prove your answer.
8. Who else used the figure about chopping down and burning fruitless trees? When did they use it? To whom were they speaking?
9. What additional figure does Luke record that clarifies Jesus-' meaning regarding the judgment of a tree by its fruit?
10. How does the principle explained in this section prepare the mind for the rest of the sermon?