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This Week's Sermon The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany 11 February 2007 "False Prophets" LSB Series C Vicar Hans W. Fiene Soli Deo Gloria!

If the words that Jesus speaks in today's text from Luke's Gospel sound a bit familiar, there's a good reason for that. These statements that Christ makes, beginning with "blessed are you" are reminiscent of that famous section of the Sermon on the Mount called "the Beatitudes" found in Matthew's Gospel.

Now, the words from Luke are structured a bit differently than they are in Matthew. And each text recalls Christ speaking them in different places, which leads us to conclude that, in Luke, Christ is preaching what is essentially the same sermon to a different audience at a different time. But even though Christ's teaching is still the same, Luke's account manages to highlight a different aspect or angle of that teaching from Matthew's account. Christ's words here are actually organized in a very Lutheran kind of way. What I mean by "Lutheran" is that the structure of Christ's blessings and woes is actually very similar to what we see in the Lutheran Confessions, in particular the Augsburg Confession. For those of you who have never read the Augsburg Confession, it contains 28 articles or doctrinal statements. Many of those statements begin by proclaiming what is doctrinally true and condemning what is doctrinally false. What the structure of the confessions and Christ's words from Luke have in common is that each starts by saying "this is the true teaching that comes from God" and each concludes by saying, "any teaching contrary to this comes from a false prophet."

So what exactly is Christ teaching in today's text? Though it may seem on the surface that Jesus is simply contrasting how God views the haves versus the have-nots, there's much more going on here. Really, Christ is addressing what are basically two different postures in the presence of God. On one hand, you've got those who tremble in the presence of God, saying that they are poor and starving and hated, that they have nothing to offer Him and that they need absolutely everything from Him. On the other hand, you've got those who stand proudly in the presence of God, announcing to Him how they're going to impress Him with all their greatness. Much like the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, here Christ issues a blessing to those begging for the Lord's mercy and a curse to those who believe that they don't need any mercy at all. Much like the structure of the Augsburg Confession, Christ's blessings depict those who believe the true teaching of God and His woes depict those who have bought into the lies of false prophets.

It may be easy to convince ourselves that being wary of false prophets is not really an issue today. After all, nobody really calls himself a prophet anymore. The only people who do are generally those haggard looking guys wearing the sandwich board signs proclaiming that the end is near. And nobody wants anything to do with that guy anyway. But, you don't have to call yourself a prophet in order to be a false prophet. Really, as Christ's words show and as the Augsburg Confession reiterates, the only requirement for being a false prophet is teaching things that are contrary to what Christ teaches. Specifically dealing with today's text, a false prophet is anyone who switches around the blessings and the woes. And it's not just someone who switches them by saying that those blessed by God have a great life and those cursed by him have a miserable one. A false prophet is also someone who switches them by saying that woes go to those who stand humbly before God with empty hands and blessings go to those who stand proudly before God with full hands, ready to impress Him.

The false prophets who advertise a very blatant kind of this works-righteousness are relatively easy to spot and, on account of that, they're pretty easy to avoid. If you were at a Borders and saw a display case for a hit book called something like "7 Things You Must do to get into Heaven", your Lutheran radar would probably go crazy. When the claim is that, if you get X number of good works under your belt, you can impress God with your holiness resume, it's easy to steer clear of that because it's obviously false.

But the lies of a false prophet are harder to spot when they're less obvious. And they generally become less obvious when the process of establishing that holiness resume becomes more internal. Instead of getting us to focus on impressing God with our external works, these false prophets get us to focus on impressing God with our internal thoughts or feelings or emotions. So, even though we might stay far away from an idea like "7 Things You Must do to get into Heaven", we're often less threatened by approaches like "7 Ways to Feel Closer to God" or "7 Deep Thoughts that God Wants You to Think." Even though these approaches still argue that we are responsible for making ourselves holy before God, they can be far more prevalent in even Lutheran circles because their subtlety prevents them from triggering the traditional works-righteousness alarm. Because thoughts and feelings don't seem like works, we're more easily fooled into believing that they can make us presentable before God if we focus on them enough.

Christ concludes today's text by saying, "Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets." The reason that false prophets are so popular, the reason people adore them and gobble up their teachings is because they are telling our sinful nature exactly what it wants to hear-that we are responsible for making ourselves acceptable to God. And so, the method for building up that holiness resume doesn't matter, whether it's by doing deeds or thinking thoughts or feeling feelings. Whatever variation the false prophet sells, we want to buy because our sinful nature is always dying to stand before God and announce before Him, "Look how rich in the Spirit I've become! Look how full of righteousness I am! Look how happy I am since now that I'm not nearly the sinner I used to be! Look how well-respected I am for being such a moral person! Lord, I really committed myself to becoming closer to you and look at how wonderful I am now!" In whatever capacity we've believed these things, we haven't just been fooled by the false prophets who speak from TV broadcasts and book tours. We've ultimately been fooled by the false prophet who speaks from within our own heart.

Being diseased and corrupt, being unclean to the core-that's not just a description of the sick and demon possessed surrounding Jesus in today's text. That's a description of us, too. Because no matter how good the things we do or think or feel look on the outside, when we do them because the false prophet in our own heart wants to impress God, when we do them for our own glorification, they come from a totally corrupt heart. Woe to every false prophet who boasts of these unclean things before the Lord.

But blessed is he who repents. Blessed is he who sees that, just as a leper can't touch his own skin and cleanse it of leprosy, so the sinner can't touch his own heart and cleanse it of sin. Blessed is he who empties his hands of those corrupt things and comes to Christ in humility, begging for mercy.

But even though we have nothing to offer Christ when we ask for His mercy, He still takes something from us when He gives us His mercy. But he doesn't take anything good or desirable. He takes from us the very things that have caused us to cry out for mercy in the first place. Just as there's more going on in this text than Christ comparing the haves and have-nots in the blessings and woes, when Christ heals those who have come to Him, there's more going on than just the healing power of Christ going into us. There's the poverty and hunger and broken heartedness of our own sin going into Christ.

That's what true mercy is. Catechumens, listen up, because we're again speaking of this thing called the Great Exchange, where Christ receives the punishment that belongs to us and we receive the favor of God that belongs to Christ. Even if you've never been poor in an earthly sense, even if you have every physical thing you need, because of sin you were spiritually poor. But because Christ is so merciful, he took your spiritual poverty upon Himself and carried it to the Cross. And, in exchange for your poverty, He gave you all the riches of His Kingdom. Even if you've never missed a meal in your life, because of sin you were starving. You were empty of righteousness. But because Christ is so merciful, he filled you with His righteous life by emptying himself of that life upon the Cross.

When Christ foreshadows this great exchange in the blessings of today's text, He confesses what true mercy is. And when Christ speaks woes to those who oppose this teaching, He's actually condemning the lies of the false prophets before they're even spoken. Now I said earlier that Christ's words here are structured in a way similar to that of the Augsburg Confession. What's interesting about this, however, is that we generally don't hear sermons preached that way. It actually seems kind of un-Lutheran to begin with the blessings of the Gospel and to end with the woes of the Law. But it's not really as backwards as it seems. You see, this Law isn't really aimed at those who were starving for the truth and who have just been given the Word of Forgiveness. It's actually aimed at the false prophets who Christ knows will immediately begin denying His merciful system. When Christ issues his woes, these are actually a gift to those who believe the Gospel. It's like Christ is saying, "these are the words you will hear coming from false prophets. And when you hear them, don't believe them. Instead, when these lies are spoken, remember the true teaching that I have just given you. Remember that when sin has left you poor, I have made you rich through my water. Remember that when sin has left you starving, I have filled you with my body and blood. Remember that when you when you have cried, I have filled you with the joy of my forgiving Word. And when the false prophets of this world hate you and revile you and reject you, remember that they do so because I have embraced you by giving you eternal life through my death and resurrection. Blessed is he who trusts in this."