Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Title: "On Messing Up the Gospel"

Text: From the Old Testament: I did not sent the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, then they would have proclaimed My words to My people, and they would have turned them from their evil ways, and from the evil of their deeds. [Jeremiah 23.21-22; ESV]

From the Epistle: For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father" [Romans 8.14; ESV]

From the Holy Gospel: "On that day, many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty works in Your name?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.'" [St. Matthew 7.22-23; ESV]

This 8th Sunday after Trinity is known both as "Beware of False Prophets Sunday" and "Little Reformation Sunday."  The two topics are very closely related, for the Reformation was a reaction to false teachers having gained a stranglehold on the Western Church. So, just as many merchants have Christmas in July or August Days, because it's a long time from one Christmas to another, and because Christmas is the most important time of the merchants' year, so it is that the texts appointed to be read on this Sunday point to the most important time in the history of the Church, the time when the Gospel is restored to the Church.

But, while Christmas actually comes but once a year, Christmas-in-August sales notwithstanding, the need for restoring the Gospel to the Church comes around quite frequently. Indeed, it is a perpetual need. For, where there are preachers and teachers and leaders in the Church â?" and that is continually â?" there exists the danger of "Messing Up the Gospel." So, today's texts unite to call you to the alert! Watch out for Messing Up the Gospel!

I.

In the Holy Gospel, Jesus warns: "Beware of False Prophets" Why should you beware of false prophets? Why should that concern you? The answer is that they can kill you! Usually this is not with a knife or a gun, although when the false prophet is a believer in another radical religion, it could be with a knife or a gun. But the greater danger, even then is what is done spiritually.

Beware of false prophets! Why? Because they come to you in sheep's clothing. They appear to be fellow members of the flock. Indeed, while they will offer themselves as leaders, they take pains to have you see them as just like you, just one of the crowd and not some person who things himself as more important than the crowd or the flock or the congregation. But inwardly, in reality, they are ravenous wolves. They will eat you up.

Now, notice carefully what Jesus says about how you know spot these false prophets: "You will recognize them by their fruits." Now, you may be tempted to think of the "fruit" of which Jesus speaks in terms of behaviors, ethics, morality: Good fruit â?" good works! Bad fruit â?" evil works! But this is not Christ's point!
The fruit is a product of a tree, and precisely it is the product that makes for more trees. The fruit carries within itself the see of the tree, the future of the tree. So you know that you have a good tree on your hand when it produces seeds, when it produces offsprings, so-to-speak.  A tree that produces bad fruit, defective fruit, fruit from whose seeds only more bad trees would come â?" that tree is cut down, lest its diseased character infect the other trees. So, when it comes to false teachers, Jesus wants you to beware of bad fruit; that is, bad teaching; that is, teaching that messes up the Gospel.

How are you to know that this is what Jesus means by "bad fruit" namely, "messing up the Gospel"? Note how He wraps up His point: "On that day many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?" A good question! For here you see these false prophets point both to their teaching and to the things that accompany their teachings, so that people would believe their teaching. And Jesus answers their good question: "Then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." And thus it is clear that their work of lawlessness is their messing up the Gospel, their spreading diseased seed that kills many.

II.

This danger of false prophets is not new. It wasn't new at the time of the Reformation. It wasn't new at the time of Christ's warning. It wasn't new in Old Testament times, for the Old Testament read to you today features the prophet Jeremiah facing terrible persecution because he opposed other, false prophets, who were offering a false Gospel to the people of Jerusalem, just prior to the fall and devastation of that city and the time in its midst.

Jeremiah's job was to preach the Law of God to unrepentant hearers. It wasn't a pleasant job, for unrepentant hearers take it out on the messenger. They brutally treated Jeremiah, and at the same time, they welcomed the false prophets who told them what, in the midst of their rebellion and unrepentant attitudes, what they wanted to hear.

This behavior does not pass by unnoticed by God Himself. He sees that His servant, Jeremiah receives brutal treatment in the conduct of his God-ordained mission. It is God's will that this continue for a time for God doesn't promise His prophets a rose garden, just the eternal reward of faithful preaching. As God declares, "Let the prophet who has a dream go on telling his dread, but let him who has My word speak My word faithfully" Let him not mess up the Gospel.

So, through the Spirit-inspired preaching of Jeremiah, God declares "I did not send the prophets, yet they came a-runing" The false prophets preached, by the way, what the hearers wanted to hear. The hearers were co-culprits in this messing up the Gospel, because they wanted to hear what the false prophets had to say. So, they also wanted Jeremiah to just shut up and go away. The message that prevailed, however, was the message of God's Law from God's appointed prophet, because that is what God gives, what He always gives, what He only gives, to the unrepentant. He does not try to entice them to repent with nice words. He drives them to repentance with the Law, and apart from a humble, repentant, even despairing heart, there is no good news from God. The good news, the un-messed up Gospel, speaks only to the humble, the contrite, the despairing, and the repentant.

III.

This brings us to the Epistle of the Day, in which St. Paul speaks of the dynamic of repentance: "if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Here, St. Paul does not describe some clean-up, paint-up, fix-up routine whereby people start to act better, where people start to be good. The deeds of the body are not retrained from bad to good. St. Paul is not calling for behavior modification. To attempt that is simply to misunderstand, and therefore mess up, the Gospel today.

No! You don't clean up your act in response to God's Word. You put your act to the sword. You kill your act. "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." How do you do that? By the very thing that Christ with His law called for out of the false prophets of His day, and Jeremiah with God's law called for in His day â?" you repent! You don't change behavior â?" rather, You put to death the deeds of the body; you "die to sin." And then, without a thing of the self left, God raises you up with the Gospel. And it is truly Gospel â?" truly Good News! No two-way deal! No new behaviors that you will then owe God! No patterns of living that make you better than you were! None of that is the Gospel! At least, none of that is the pure Gospel!

Here is the pure Gospel: "You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons" The pure Gospel is the message of the Father to the prodigal Son: "Welcome home, My son" The phrase, "the Spirit of adoption" doesn't refer to an attitude; it is a direct reference to God the Holy Spirit. For, it is God the Holy Spirit who brings about this humility through the Law of God, and who brings about faith through the Gospel of God. It is the Holy Spirit who has brought you to new life, to life in the un-messed-up Gospel.