It's hard to imagine that it's been almost 11 years since 9-11 happened, but it's not hard for us to harken back to the frantic aftermath of those days in which the vigilance this nation had to enter into a posture of was to a degree and on a scope unprecedented. It seemed as if in that moment the whole world was a threat. And if we weren't sensitive to and prepared for it, something worse might happen. Since then, you and I have heard mostly of foiled attacks in forwarded terrorist efforts when it comes to attacks lodged or targeted against this nation, and though we may debate over the manner in mode in which our government has seen fit to protect us of this we are sure that their vigilance has been refined and we're glad of that because no calamity of that size or scale has happened since that day. And that's a good thing that they do it well because I'm pretty sure that you or I could not just slip our way into Yemen and tip off the CIA to any movements of a sleepersel. We would not be able to expose any efforts to rig up some new incendiary device that fits into men's underwear. We're just not good at that, that ain't our skill set. We are glad that we may, if you will, outsource that responsibility of staving off those threats to others who are more adequate to the task. From Jesus's first word in the text we'll consider this morning, it's the word beware. We know he's concerned about a threat, a threat to those who will follow after him, a threat to those who will seek to live and participate in the kingdom that he's establishing for his death, resurrection and ascension to be clear. And he is going to call us to a posture of vigilance because these threats are real, but these threats and the necessary vigilance is not something we can outsource. The Gospel of Jesus Christ on one hand says unequivocally that you and I are entirely powerless to bring us into the favor of God that we are entirely passive recipients of his kindness, but Jesus's focus in this passage is on what we cannot be passive about. The threats are real, they matter, and they will not be deterred by an action. Every time you see a warning on a sign like beware of dog or mind the gap or watch for falling rock, there are three implicit messages in that sign. What the concern is, why it's a concern and what you should do to respect that concern. We're going to do that with Jesus's word beware. What are these threats he's warning us of? Why are they threats? And what is the form of vigilance we must take to stave them off? That's our task. That's the burden he's left before us this morning. So would you stand for reading from God's word from Matthew 7, starting in verse 15. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You recognize them by their fruits or grapes gathered from thornbishes or figs from thistles. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the disease tree bears bad fruit. The healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a disease tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. That's to recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. 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'll declare to them and never knew you. Apart from me, your workers of lawlessness. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, maybe seated. My eldest son just turned nine, which is a milestone. It means I'm halfway to graduation. It also means I'm halfway to that proverbial moment where in driving him to college I will feel the need to compress everything. I forgot to tell him over the last 18 years into whatever length it takes to get him to school. And so you feel that moment. You feel that urgency to get across everything you can because this world is out to get you. I will have to tell him in so many words, there's an urgency and a concern because my supervision of his life will have changed at that moment. It may be a little overdrawn to say that even though there are miles to go before Jesus ascends into heaven in this moment in the sermon on the Mount, he is coming to them with a similar kind of urgency, a similar kind of concern for what they will be up against because he will not be with them in the same way that he has been with them hasn't, presently. He's going to rattle off two related but distinct threats. And the first is this, that you and I will always be under threat of a deception from without. He says in verse 15, you are aware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but who are into the Arab and his woes, he is warning that there will be those who speak on his behalf, who speak with clarity, confidence, conviction, have all the ostensible marks of authority but who will in the end nevertheless be nothing more than another example of the blind leading the blind. They are not telling ball face lies, they are not speaking blatant misrepresentations, they have mixed just enough error with the semblance of truth to sniff or smell like somebody that is telling the truth. And that's why he has to warn them because we will be so easily taken in by them. You don't have to go far to find examples of that. Jesus is up against what he foretells. Right then he is up against the Pharisees, men of great learning, great religious and social authority whose message had taken the essence of God's word and distorted it. Distorted it about, for instance, the meaning, the purpose of the Sabbath, about how to care for one's parents, about the significance of one's relatedness to Abraham, even distortions about how and what God would do in the world to fulfill his covenant promise. Jesus is out to confront this aberrant teaching that has every semblance of truth because it's full of truth in it, but it's a deception. And so Jesus' own experience confirms what he's warning of, but that tradition continues not long after he's ascended. You know what happened in the books of Acts and if you read Paul's epistles. It's not long before you hear distortions of the gospel from without by those who hailed Jesus as Lord, but who also insisted that the eternal favor of God was tied to one's performance of the law, they were called judisers, a hybrid of Pharisee and Christ follower it felt like whom Paul has to confront. There's was a grave distortion that had such an appearance of truth that even the Apostle Peter bites on it. Paul and Galatians 2 has to get up in Peter's business in front of everybody and expose this false gospel and expose the incoherence with which he's following it. That is a sobering irony because a deception had crept in from without and now it was starting to take root from within the church, from within Peter himself. And if you look at the Swath of Church history, you find that phenomenon continuing too often. The most recent catalog of which came out even last month in our modern American history. Russ Dalfitt is a Roman Catholic, he's the youngest columnist for the New York Times, he's written a book called Bad Religion and it is his thesis that the decline of the churches or religions, integrity and credibility in American society is attributable not so much to the rise of secularism but to the rise of heretical ideas that have crept from without into the church. The church buying into distortions of the gospel that compromise her capacity to be and act as the church. He documents in the last half of his book four strains of falsely prophetic teaching, I'll just mention two for time's sake. There are those who speak of a prosperity gospel, who take the passages that speak of God's blessing, his people with material things and shaping that into a whole theology that equates wealth with divine favor. Now no one will deny that in scripture there are moments when God does show his kindness in the form of material prosperity, but you have to justify this distortion of the gospel by entirely excising from the scriptures, the equally prevent texts, about one, the capacity for riches to dull, to distract and even to see us, and also the fact that the blessings that come from sacrificing wealth for the sake of the kingdom, that's infected the church and it's a deception from without. The other is like unto it. The second has to do with a nebulous self-absorbed, choose your own spirituality, which certainly honors Jesus as an embodiment of this form of relationship to the transcendent, but it has neither center nor boundary, it is just make it as you will. It acknowledges the transcendent, but it so exalts our inner compass that it denies the corruption in us that can mislead us and something is lost in our embrace of it, something vital. And here we're getting into why these threats really are threats. Some falsely prophetic voices will turn your life before God into a tyranny. Sometime read the woes that Jesus pronounces upon the Pharisees in Matthew 23, and you will hear how he finds in their teaching an oppression that at the same time neglects the way to your center of the law. Listen to Paul's warnings and his epistles about believing that you can rely on your adherence to the law as the basis of your confidence before God. If you buy either deception, it's an enslavement because it sets you up for an impossible expectation and it makes fear the primary motivation for your obedience. Some deceptions from without turn your life into a tyranny. Your voices are just as dangerous because they just tell you what you want to hear. What Dalfit documents in his book is really embodied anticipated by what Paul warns of in 2 Timothy 4. He says, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. Today we call it a confirmation bias. It's not unique to the church. It's universally experienced by all humanity, particularly in America. You read maybe over the weekend David Brooks article about the decline of politics in this country and he says, leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. People like power and they accrue power and preserve their power by ingratiating themselves to people that will give them the power. And you and I are susceptible to that very move ourselves. And when we surround ourselves with the messages that accommodate us, we're only living out the very first sin, the sin of denying God's authority over us. That's the threat. One of them, real, consequential. So what is the form of vigilance that Jesus prescribes? Vigilance we need entails a patient exercise of discernment. He's going to say to us in those first few verses, you're going to recognize them by their fruits. That is, the authenticity or lack thereof of one who speaks for Jesus will be revealed in due course. The content of their words will either bear up under scrutiny or be found to be incongruent with what the scriptures have always taught. Or the character of their lives will either testify to the sounds of their teaching or it will invalidate it. What does that demand of us concretely? It means we have to resist biting on the first word of what we hear from someone who speaks for Jesus. Instead we watch, we wait, we ponder, we pray, we discuss, we deliberate, and then we decide. And along the way, we have to do what every agent of the counterfeit division of the treasury department has to do. In order to know what counterfeits look like, they don't study mostly the inauthentic versions. They study the genuine article. The more familiar we become with Jesus, the more attuned we will be to the counterfeit versions thereof. And so the deception from without requires a patient probing discernment based on a growing familiarity with the messaging manner of Jesus. That's the first threat, that's the first warning, that's the first prescription. The second threat is more insidious. You and I, just as we'll go under the threat of a deception from without. We'll be under a threat of delusion from within, from at our own selves. It's a delusion that consists of a fundamentally flawed version of devotion to him. Like the false, super-fed words from without, this delusion has all the appearances of a real and vital spirituality. To look at verse 22 and you hear what these people are saying as a case for their inclusion in the kingdom, they will say, we prophesied, we cast out strongholds of demonic influence, we performed what anyone else might conclude was of divine power. And we did it all in his name. We mentioned him, we invoked him, we gave him credit, we ascribed authority to him. That sounds like a thwarted hate of devotion. And you know, Jesus has its false. It lacks something foundational. The absence of which renders the entire enterprise invalid. What's missing? What burst the bubble? I think you could characterize what's missing as a communing obedience. True devotion, Jesus says in verse 21, involves doing the will of his father. Not simply speaking about it, doing it, submitting to it. And that makes that contrast that Jesus is painting even harder to understand because it sure sounds like this is an authentic version of submission. But Jesus says that true devotion also is a consequence of him knowing them. He says in verse 23 to those who have adopted this false version of devotion, he says, I never knew you. What does that mean? This knowing is not like knowing what time it is. It's not like knowing that 2 plus 2 equals 4. It's not like knowing that the only way the Mavericks are going to be able to beat Kevin Durant this year is if they play him on Xbox. It's a different kind of knowing. This knowing is more akin to how a husband knows a wife or how a parent knows a child. It has everything to do with intimacy. A mutual understanding of one another that translates into a true, endeared responsiveness to the other's will. That's what's missing. But even that is kind of abstract. Can we drill down any further? What does it look like? Look, can I just be honest about this text? It scares the peanuts out of my M&Ms because I spend most of my waking hours either speaking for or preparing to speak on his behalf. And so I want to know what he means, not just because I have to explain it to you, but because I want to know if I'm guilty of the same delusion he's warning everyone of. So what else from the scriptures might elucidate his meaning? Consider the older brother in Luke 15 and the parable of the prodigals. You have there a typical, strict adherence by one to his father, done everything his father asked of him, but it wasn't done out of love. His was a compliant devotion, but one which did not reflect the same heart of love that the father had for the more reckless son. It's a counterfeit devotion. Paul says likewise in the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13 about how those who speak with a tongue of men and angels but have not loved who give their bodies to be burned but have not loved, he says that devotion is nothing. Of no consequence, no pleasure to God because to know him and to be known by him is to walk in love for him. This illegitimate devotion betrays a total unfamiliarity with God. We might hear just a subtle hint of self justification in their words. It's as if they're trying to say, look, this is what we did in your name doesn't that obligate you to reward us and bless us. To know Jesus is to know that there's nothing I can do for Jesus that would oblige him to do anything. I can't impress him. I can't get him to love me. I can't put him in my debt and to operate under those assumptions is to be deluded. There might also be an innuendo in those words of self aggrandizement on their case. Because that which they point to centers on almost entirely public activity. Efforts that can be seen and perhaps afford them a social respect that they think obligates God to reward them but to know Jesus is to realize this. The public life that pleases God is born out of the private life that is content with only being seen and known by God. Haven't we heard that somewhere before, maybe in Matthew chapter 6. Whatever the precise nature of this deluded kind of devotion, I think it boils down to this. Its agenda doesn't have God at the center. It has its own self. In one of the last novels that he wrote, C.S. Lewis did a retelling of the Greek myth of psyche and cupid and he entitled that book till we have faces. It is the story of a fanciful nation that is under a curse and the priesthood that mediates the God's will to this nation comes to its king and says, you must make a sacrifice and the sacrifice must be your youngest and fairest daughter whose name is psyche. Psychie has an older half sister. Her name is a rule. She is a homely figure in the story and its narrator and who has practically parented psyche from her infancy because her mother had died in childhood. Psychie is taken to the mountain of the gods and is sacrificed and later a rule goes to gather her remains and there finds psyche quite alive and in her right mind. And then she begins to tell a rule of these marvelous things all around them, sights, smells, wonders and that she's become married to the God. He never permits her to see his face but he is and has become her husband and the rule is wondering, where are you seeing all this? I can't see it myself and she is conflicted and she goes home and deliberates the issue and then concludes that psyche is mad and she goes to try to retrieve her. And when psyche says I will not come I am married to the God a rule says then take this lamp and the next time he returns home like that lamp that you might see his face but you might know his true identity for it is not a God but those of a treacherous man. And psyche says I will not do it and to force her hand a rule takes a knife and stabs it through her own arm and says I will kill myself if you don't psyche in that moment relents and says to a rule these words you are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know it is like looking into a deep pit I am not sure whether I like your kind better than hatred. A rule to take my love for you because you know it goes down to my very roots and cannot be diminished by any other newer love and then to make of it a tool a weapon an instrument of torture I begin to think I never knew you I have no idea if CS Lewis had Jesus's words from verse 23 in his mind when he puts in psyche's words I begin to think I never knew you. But a rule is the embodiment of taking advantage of another's love and using it as a tool for one's own purposes it is a self-centered and manipulative act that only has an appearance of love and that I think is at the center of what's wrong with this diluted devotion every time I hope others see what I do for God I put myself at the center of my devotion every time I seek to take credit or shift the blame for my error I put myself at the center of my devotion and every time I begin to think that my eternal favor rests on my work rather than on what Christ's work is done for me I have made myself the center of my devotion and so I need to become vigilant that I do not follow that delusion that is so subtle and the only way I may is to ask myself questions regularly two questions for all the public parts of my devotion your devotion the presence in worship here or showing up at a fellowship group or my presence and consistent action on a service team I have to ask myself does my private world parallel or belie the private dimension rather the public dimension how do you know just start reviewing the entire sermon on the mountain is your attention to all the parts that are to be done in secret as consistent as the parts to be done in public and then we have to ask ourselves this also question is my obedience a consequence based on a communion with him on the basis of a trust that he knows me loves me leads me see before that dramatic moment between a rual and psyche psyche is trying to reassure her older half sister that her love remains even though she's married to the God now she says to her you do not think I have left off loving you because now I have a husband as well if you would understand it that makes me love you why it makes me love you I love everyone and everything more if we are trusting that he knows us and loves us anyway our love for everyone and everything will in turn grow that's a true devotion and that's what helps us to ask and answer this last question why do we need Jesus's words of warning here but why do we also need him to finish his sermon and go to his cross so we need him to speak this beware but then also ascend into heaven we need Jesus to finish his sermon and go to the cross so that he might resolve our greatest deception and delusion the deception that we are the masters of our own fate and that we are the ones best equipped to find what is true life or the deception that believes that we are beyond hope and that our past choices or present circumstances make any hope of future forgiveness or joy impossible those are deceptions that stick deeply in us and at the same time that Jesus is reconciling us to God his father at the cross he's unmasking those lies we've come to believe we need his words but we need his cross and we also need his ascension into heaven when Jesus says to his disciples in John 16 it's better that I go so that the comforter may come you have to realize that what the ascension is is not Jesus's big disappearing act by it's actually Jesus's great disentangling act he sends to us the spirit when he departs and that spirit comes to us in an unprecedented fashion and degree it indwells all believers it confirms the truth of what Christ has done for us and by his power he begins to disentangle from us what is either deception or delusion in fact every false thing that you believe right now if you worked it back to what he has done for you at his cross and in his ascension you would find a reason not to cling to the lie and so that's why we need this table it points our souls to what Jesus did to disentangle us from sin lies death and hell and it confers to us a grace by his spirit through these elements and in so doing it is God equipping us with a sense of himself that challenges the lies we've embraced you and I will always be besieged by half truths but he's not left us without a means to see through them and so I invite you to this table to see him again to know him again to remember that he knows you and that thereby have your vigilance strengthened in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen