Today we continue our discussion of Jesus’ warning “Beware of false prophets”. Jesus has taught us, through the Sermon on the Mount, the character of God, the culture of His kingdom, what He requires of His children and the heart condition, called surpassing righteousness, necessary for following Jesus. After His teaching was complete Jesus called us to a decision, to enter by the narrow gate, to continually choose the narrow way, to refer to the language that He would later use, to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. The warning, to “beware of false prophets” is completely connected to the calling to enter the narrow gate and walk the narrow way. The false prophets that Jesus is warning us of are not people that have made mistakes of prophesy, that while only seeing in part tried to prophesy in full, that in their sincere desire followed their heart with a “word” rather than waiting for the Spirit to lead in truth. The false prophets that Jesus is warning us of are the prophets of the broad way, they are those that prophesy for themselves, they use God’s name to try to get their own way. They use God to boost or protect their reputation, to fulfill their own wants and desires and to justify the way they want to go rather than the way that God has required. Prophets of the broad way overemphasize forgiveness while underemphasizing responsibility, they teach salvation without surrender, worship without holiness, forgiveness without repentance and spirituality without transformation. The false prophets that Jesus warns us of are not people that talked about something they didn’t understand, the truth is we have all done that, they are people that are so set on getting what they want and doing things their way that they will say and do anything to get others to join them, they don’t just choose the broad way for themselves they lead others to it as well. As I shared last week, the chief way to beware false prophets is to tend to our hearts, before we ever start looking around to see if there are false prophets among us we have to look within and be sure that there are not false prophet thoughts and desires within us. Every single verse of the Sermon on the Mount has been about the condition of our hearts, I don’t believe that suddenly in the call to respond to the sermon that Jesus has changed the focus of the sermon. “Judge not that you be not judged” continues to be in effect and so the call to “beware of false prophets” is not a call to be suspicious, or to be isolated, or to be untrusting, it is a call to be careful with our hearts so that we can be careful with the hearts of those that surround us. Yes, there are false prophets, there are people that have chosen to use the Word of God and the name of God to satisfy their own desires and get their own way but before we can ever know how to deal with those people we have to be faithfully dealing with our own condition. In today’s text Jesus uses the analogy of a tree and its fruit to reveal how we can spot a false prophet, I would like for us to look closely at Jesus’ analogy and ask ourselves, “am I a tree that bears good fruit?” The greatest way to “beware of false prophets” is to live in a continual desire to be “pure in heart” because as Jesus promised at the beginning of His sermon, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”