False Vs. True Leaders and Followers
Jonah 3:4-4:11
Psalm 120
*Matthew 7:15-23
Who can we trust? An even bigger question, who can we follow? Last week Jesus told us that there is a narrow gate that leads to life and few people enter in, so a big question becomes how do we find the narrow path? Who can lead us to life? Today, we hear that it isn’t as easy as we may think. False leaders are all around us. There are also false followers all around us. We could even be those followers that say, Lord, Lord, but don’t do the will of God. A leader or a follower may not be what they appear to be on the surface. Someone might appear to be nice, saying good things, even doing good things, but at the same time are leading us astray, and hurting the kingdom of God. How can we know who to follow, and who is sent from God?
Beware false prophets. Today, Jesus starts with a warning. Watch out for people who only pretend to know and represent God. Jesus says this because the false representation of God and His good are way more prevalent than we think. In fact, it was a huge problem in Jesus’ day, throughout the Old Testament and even today. There are people that speak for God, or pretend to hold authority, but don’t actually follow him. Throughout the time of the Kings of Israel, there were numerous false prophets who came forward telling Israel that everything would be alright, God was ignoring their sin. There were only a few true prophets who were trying to point God’s people towards God’s anger and our need for repentance. Throughout Jesus’ day there were plenty of people Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees especially, that made the Bible into a law code too burdensome for people to ever find life and freedom. Notice something in both of these examples: false leaders take something really good - hope and forgiveness in the days of the kings and the law and righteous living in the days of Jesus - and then these false leaders distort it until it actually isn’t about following God anymore.
That is what we see today in our daily lives. There are so many good things in this world that people are lifting up - that we are being told to follow, to practice, to hope in. These things are being dolled out by people in and outside of the church - yet almost all of them are not God. What are some of the things we are longing for right now? Peace, homes for everyone, food security, equity, health, safety, you could probably list your own. All of these are good things, but they are not the good thing. Sadly, without God at the helm, all of them will become distorted, corrupted, and not good things. Without God, safety can lead to never stepping out, never taking a risk on someone else, and never inviting them in. Without God equity can lead to being scared to speak out, feeling guilty for who we are, and putting someone else down. I could go on. What we are experiencing here is what Jesus is warning us against: we are eating corrupted fruit from bad trees.
The hard part is that someone might appear to be what they need to be. A false leader can appear as a lamb. A false leader can be nice, pleasant, and seem to be a good friend, but at the same time they are tearing us and the Kingdom down. Their fruit might look desirable and good to eat, but it only leads to disorder, corruption, and destruction. The added difficulty is that false leaders might even seem to do good things, we see in the second half of our reading that people rejected from God’s Kingdom are still calling Jesus Lord, they cast out demons, they worked miracles, they spoke for God and yet they were not following God. We must see their fruit for what it is. So we have to know what makes for good fruit.
So what is the good fruit we are watching for? Vs. 21 of our text today tells us that only those who do the will of the Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So doing the will of God is a central part of this fruit. This is a hard place to start because that means that we need to know the will of the Father ourselves to judge that. We need to be reading our bible and spending time in prayer to know God’s character enough to know when something isn’t coming from him. Remember false Christians could still say Lord, Lord to Jesus and do amazing things in His name, but the question is were they actually living with Jesus as their Lord and master, were they doing good things in obedience to him - so we must discern what is beyond the surface.
So again we must ask, what is good fruit? It is doing the will of the Father, but let's define it more. Thankfully, Jesus has already been teaching us for 2 and a half chapters about that good fruit. We see in the beatitudes that good fruit looks like true need and humility before God, that it comes with a hunger for God, it comes with mercy and peacemaking, and good fruit is trying to purify our heart, our feelings, and our longings to be for God. Jesus goes beyond the Beatitudes. We see that we are meant to be salt and light to a dark world - pointing the way, preserving what is good. Through His teaching on the law, we see good fruit is the fruit of repentance, faithfulness, and restoration between us, others, and God. Through giving, prayer, and fasting, we see that good fruit is a personal, private sacrificial relationship with God. We see that good fruit casts out worry and instills trust. We see that good fruit leads to a greater relationship with God and leads others to it too. This is just the highlight of the sermon on the mount. I should also remind you of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that all come together. I know you won’t remember all of these, but keep them in your heart and look back if you are ever in doubt.
It may feel a bit ironic for me to be standing up here saying this. I am in many ways leading this church, with the help of others. I say that I have a relationship with God and that I am in some ways speaking for him and representing him. None of this is bad, but the bigger question that you must ask and judge of me and of any leader is, am I bearing God’s good fruit? Am I truly living in obedience to God and helping to build his Kingdom or am I secretly a ravenous wolf? I had to spend some time in prayer to discern this for myself and so should you.
And it is really important that you do, because remember that narrow road that leads to life, there is a much easier and broad road that leads to destruction and so many things and people leading us there. Or we get the image today of someone trying to pick grapes or figs out of thorns or thistles. It is like we reach in to get something delicious and good and yet all we get is pain, loss, and a trap.
The hard part is Jesus’ definitiveness about good trees and bad trees. We all know that we fall short at times, we all know that it takes time effort, and failure to learn how to follow Jesus fully. Does this make us all bad trees? The first thing to realize is that the only truly good tree is Jesus. He is the only uncorrupted one that we can follow outright. That is why the center of bearing good fruit is doing the will of the Father. That is the only thing that leads to good fruit. If you are following the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit before you are following me or anything else, that means that even my good-intentioned weakness, blindness, and sins can still be for God’s Kingdom and it can mean the same for yours too.
That becomes an important way for us to understand the good fruit of people. Remember one of the fruits of God is repentance. This means that a bad word or action can become a good fruit by turning back to God and changing. God can and will redeem the bad things if we are recommitting ourselves to be obedient to him through it. In fact, sometimes great wrong in my life has led to some of the most amazing things because God’s redemptive power works through it.
We must also be careful not to judge someone’s fruit based on our feelings or people’s reactions. There were plenty of people who reacted poorly to Jesus. There are plenty of people that reject God and turn away from either his judgment or his love and the same is true for us. Following God can be hard and so our emotions sometimes need to catch up to the good. Again, we must watch for how someone points us to obedience to God and the building of the Kingdom. I know these add levels of complication, but they are important if we are to determine the narrow path.
Let's look at it another way that Jesus puts it to hopefully help simplify it. A corrupted tree produces corrupted fruit. What happens with rotting fruit? It smells, it spreads the mold, it stains. What happens if we eat it? We might not get sick right away, but it will make us sick. It might make us throw up the good things we have taken in. It might give us a fever, unable to experience clearly the goodness in the world or go out at all. It is similar to the rotten fruit of a false leader. It spreads, it corrupts, it debilitates, it takes away what is good.
A healthy tree bears good fruit. What makes for a healthy tree? It has a good and deep root system, it is well watered, there is space around it, it has good access to the sun and nothing eating away at it. These are all natural things that point us to the social, spiritual, and physical health of true leaders and true followers. We must be deeply rooted in Christ, watered and fed by our relationship with him, leaving space for him, facing the light of Christ, with nothing pulling us away or eating at us.
It is not enough to simply call Jesus Lord and Master, we must live that out as if it was absolutely true by doing His will. We must follow him first, even before the greatest leaders, but we must also discern if those around us are actually following Jesus as their Lord and Master. It isn’t enough to simply do things in his name, or to do seemingly good, even amazing things, because even the best things are corrupting without God. We need to look at ourselves and those around us and judge, are we producing good fruit that lasts, the fruit of obedience to God, the fruit of God’s Kingdom? Only when we see the good fruit can we find the help and be the help that leads people to the narrow path that leads to life - a life eternal in God’s Kingdom.
Notes:
False leaders can be nice, pleasant people that seem to be good friends, but they can at the same time can be tearing us and the Kingdom down.
What are fruits?
In the text:
Doing the will of the Father? - Not just having Jesus as Lord - It must be lived out
Not just doing something amazing for God, but doing it because it is what God wants
A lot of people can and will say one thing (God is Lord, I am prophesying or doing this work in his name), but they are not actually doing his will
Before
The Beatitudes - true need and humility before God
Hunger for a relationship
Mercy
Purifying our hearts (longing, feelings, thoughts)
Peacemaking
Fruit of repentance, faithfulness, and restoration
A private sacrificial relationship with God
The Fruit of the Spirit
love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (all together)
Grapes and figs from thistles or thorns - we get this image of someone trying to reach in to grab the fruit only to get hurt instead.
Scary in its definitiveness
No one does this all the time - only Jesus - he is the only true leader
But when you see bad fruit in leaders watch for the fruit of repentance and restoration
God transforms what may seem like bad fruit at first to something that is far greater
Bad fruit is not a person’s reaction to what someone did
Another way of looking at it: What trees are we pulling up fruit from? The things directly of God or from facsimiles, secondary goods. - The temptation of the enemy is always a gentle and clever deception that seems like good, but is a gentle twist of the truth - the end results are the easiest way to perceive it. - look at the garden
How do we bear good fruit? We need to be a healthy tree, well rooted, watered, in the light, with some space around us and nothing eating away at us
Even the demons tremble in fear before God. They know that he is Lord and yet, they do not do his will. We can be tempted to follow many things that try to be God for us. People can try to replace him too or manipulate who he is with what they say and do.
The funny thing is that we have the story of Jonah, not because he turned away from God numerous times, but because he turned out to be a true prophet. (The boat and Nineveh)
