JESUS PROTECTS HIS SHEEP FROM THE WOLVES
Prayer: Dear Lord, we are the people of Your pasture and the sheep of Your hand. The false teachers, like ravenous wolves, threaten to destroy Your flock. We ask You to protect us by the truth of Your Word. In the name of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Amen.
The Text, St. Matthew 7:15-23 (v. 15-16a). “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. Lord, keep our steps firmly on the path of Your truth. Amen!
Dear people loved by God in Christ, whose sheep we are if we hear His voice: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and Jesus our Lord.
Sheep follow their shepherd. He’s the one who takes care of the sheep, takes them to pastures and brooks where they will eat and drink, watches out for them and protects them from predators. Nobody else will do that for the sheep. Only their shepherd will. So they follow him.
We follow Jesus. We’re in His flock. The Church – the one holy Christian Church – is His flock. He’s their shepherd, the Good Shepherd. He’s the one who takes care of us. Nobody else will do for us what Jesus promises to do for us. So we follow Him, the Good Shepherd.
Jesus has ascended, but He still shepherds us and we still follow Him. He doesn’t do it directly, in only one location, like He did when He was with the disciples on earth. He does it at once in many places. He does it, He shepherds, through the means of grace: in His Word, in Baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper. That’s what He uses to take care of us. This is how you’re shepherded by Jesus. He shepherds you by sending His “under-shepherds,” pastors, who take care of His sheep by giving them Jesus.
This is truly wonderful for both the sheep and the under-shepherds. What a relief, that in an uncaring world, God sends someone who will keep speaking the words of eternal life to you! What a privilege for the pastor, that God lets him speaks to his fellow sinners words such as angels spoke!
Jesus shepherds us by sending shepherds, or pastors. A faithful pastor leads people to salvation, so a Christian follows not the man, but the Word he preaches – and so follows Jesus. It works so well that Jesus confidently says: “My sheep hear My voice … and they follow Me.”
This is the means of grace ministry that Christ instituted. He provides the Gospel, and He provides a man to speak it into your ears, and the Holy Spirit creates faith when you hear the Gospel. When I say that the sheep follow a faithful shepherd, I’m not saying that you follow your pastor – we don’t follow men – but that you follow where the pastor is leading and pointing you: to Jesus, your true Shepherd. You follow the voice of Jesus. When a pastor faithfully preaches the Gospel, you don’t hear his voice but you actually hear Jesus’ voice. Jesus tells His under-shepherds: “He who hears you is hearing Me” (Lk 10:16).
This is how God intends to shepherd you. But there is something that gets in the way. There are also so-called shepherds who don’t do Jesus’ shepherding. Jesus gives a warning, and He gives it to His sheep: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”
This warning is about how Jesus’ sheep are to follow the shepherds He sends: not blindly, but always examining them. Why must the sheep examine their shepherds? So that they do not get plundered and stolen away from Jesus by one who is a “ravenous wolf.”
How can this happen? Jesus says “you will know them by their fruits.” The “fruits” are what the pastor produces: the doctrine – what he teaches, what he says and does, his preaching and practice. That’s what to examine. Not whether a pastor is friendly, has a magnetic personality or is good with youth, but whether you hear Jesus clearly through him. Because if He doesn’t give you Jesus, if you don’t receive this, you will die spiritually.
This is how Jesus’ sheep are destroyed: when they follow a shepherd who takes them everywhere but to Jesus. In the church this happens when you’re not given Jesus’ doctrine, or what the Bible clearly says, especially the Gospel of sins forgiven. This would be leading sheep away from Jesus.
So this is important. But the next important point is that the sheep do the examining; laypeopleexamine the pastor’s teaching.
The Bible shows this: Jesus’ words, “Beware of false prophets,” weren’t spoken privately but in the Sermon on the Mount, to a crowd. In 1 John it says: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (4:1).Those words were written to congregations. In Acts 17, the Christians of Berea are commended because they listened to the preaching of Paul and Silas but “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”
Like them, all Christians must examine what their church, what their pastors as their shepherds, are teaching them. If the sheep follow blindly and don’t examine the teaching, they’ll only be hurt. Look around. The countryside is littered with churches that used to take God’s Word seriously, used to believe God’s Word was divinely inspired, used to preach sin and repentance, used to preach grace. Now they don’t. Part of the reason is that false prophets came to them in sheep’s clothing. The other part is that the sheep – the laypeople – didn’t bother to actively read and study the Word and keep current in letting the Bible form their faith, didn’t examine the doctrine, didn’t object to what contradicted the Bible.
It would be nice if we wouldn’t have to examine the doctrine, if we could assume the church will be the same it always has been. It would be nice if you could assume that if it says the name of our synod on it, it’s automatically right. But we know we can’t trust sheep’s clothing because of the many who have previously been led astray by unfaithful shepherds.
If we don’t continue to read and study the Bible, if we don’t judge our pastor’s sermons and our synod’s doctrines against the Bible, we too could be led astray, away from Jesus, and be hurt eternally. Jesus gives us this warning, because we live where we can be led astray. He doesn’t want that.
Jesus wants to shepherd us. He wants us to feed on Him. He wants us to be protected by Him, to be protected by His Word.
He gave us this promise, which we should always remember: “My sheep hear My voice … and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand.”
How does this promise come true, if false teachers are always coming into the church to deceive us if possible?
It’s that Jesus says: “My sheep hear My voice.” What voice? What words? It isn’t just anything that Jesus says. It’s the Gospel: the words that absolve you of sin. The words, “Child, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you,” are these words of Jesus. The words, “You are clean, through the word I have spoken to you,” are these words of Jesus. The words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You are My beloved child, in whom I am well pleased,” are these words of Jesus. The words, “This is My body … This is My blood, given and shed for you, for the remission of all your sins,” are these words of Jesus. The words “Lo, I am with you always,” are these words of Jesus. The words for the hour of death, “This child is not dead, but sleeping,” and “Come, you blesséd of My Father, enjoy the kingdom prepared for you,” are these words of Jesus.
This is the voice of your Savior. The Holy Spirit teaches you to listen for that voice. Learn to desire and respond to only that voice. All preaching, all pastoring, all Christian doctrine must give you only that voice, the clear voice of Jesus who saves. This is what we require of our pastors, our church and our synod. “Lord, keep us in Your Word, we pray.” Amen.