Jeremiah 23:16-29/Acts 20:27-38/St Matthew 7:15-23
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
One of the most prominent mega-churches in America boasts that they are “built on the vision God gave Pastor Steven. We will aggressively defend our unity and that vision.” While this church - if it can even be called that - is exceptional in that they have had wild numerical growth, with multi-site campuses, they are pretty typical of a new breed of church that is emerging today. All centered around a dynamic leader with a “vision.”
It’s not just a “vision” in the sense of a hope or aspiration. The leaders of such churches claim to be receiving direct revelations from God. They are not pastors. They are false prophets. And the result? The church is built on the vision of the man - a vision that cannot be questioned or opposed - rather than built on the foundation of the Word of God, Christ Jesus Himself the cornerstone.
This is a new kind of papacy, where the authoritative, infallible ruler of the church is not the Bishop of Rome, but every pastor with a vision.
The problem of the dreamer-pastor spinning his visions to beguile the masses is not a new problem. It wasn’t new when Martin Luther dared question the false doctrine of Roman Catholic indulgences while simultaneously opposing the radical reformers shouting about their own visions and writing to defend the holy Christian Church from the barbarism of the Turks. I guess much hasn’t changed. One can see false pastors, false shepherds, false prophets in every age.
The Lord warned about these dreamers as we heard in Jeremiah: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. I did not speak to them, says the Lord, yet they prophesied.
The foundation of the Church is not a dream of a vision given to an individual or even a team of like-minded hyper-spiritualists. The foundation of the Church is the Word of God recorded for you in Holy Scripture. Don’t listen to “new” revelations and dreams. Everything you need has already been given to you in Holy Scripture.
It would be easy to simply reject the visionary-pastor out of knee-jerk conservatism. To mock his gimmicks or laugh at his style. But this is not a matter of protecting turf or being “old-school” or rejecting change. Its a matter of life and death. The Lord warns of false prophets because false prophets preach false doctrine. And believing false doctrine, no matter how sincerely, damns. The disciple of Jesus puts this one truth before everything else: Jesus, the incarnate God, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, is the final revelation, the final statement, the final Word of God. There is nothing else.
The cold, hard reality is this: you are a sinner. Light-shows and rock bands, soft-peddling the Law or watering down the Gospel, can’t escape this reality. You are a sinner. Jesus was crucified for your sins. No we wait for the end. That’s it. No new dreams. No new visions. No new revelations. It. Is. Finished.
Except that the message of the lying prophet is alluring precisely because he tells you what you want to hear. Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. We want hope. We want our politicians to give us hope. We want our doctors to give us hope. We want out coaches to give us hope. And we certainly want someone who claims to speak for God to give us hope.
So hope is what the false preacher offers. Hope is what the false prophet sells. Hope of a vague heaven. Hope of a better life now. Jeremiah tells us the core of the false message of the dreamer, the visionary pastor: It shall be well with you; and, No disaster shall come upon you.
That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But pay attention to whom these words are spoken. To the one who stubbornly follows his own heart. Now that’s a popular sermon preached not only from every false pastor’s pulpit, but from every politician’s dais and every self-helper’s blog. Yes, everything preaches. And sometimes they use words. But this is the overwhelming sermon of our culture: “Follow your heart.” People get married - and divorced - following their heart. They join churches, leave churches, move to new cities, buy new cars, amputate their genitals, do whatever seems right in their own eyes, and its all validates, its all justified, whatever it is, whatever you want to do, so long as you follow your heart. How can you argue with that?
What does Holy Scripture say about your heart? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer 17:9) Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander (Mt 15:19).
Following your heart might be the worst advice you could possibly get. Your heart lies to you; tells you what your flesh wants. And when it comes to spiritual things, your heart really lies to you. The theological term for this is original sin or inherited sin. It refers not to the sin of our first parents, but to the condition, the spiritual condition in which every one of us is born. One of the Confessions of the Church puts it this way: “The entire notion that a person is righteous is mere hypocrisy before God. We must acknowledge that our heart is, by nature, destitute of fear, love, and trust in God” (Ap II 33). The Reformers saw our human nature described in just four short words from Psalm 116: All men are liars.
I used to watch the TV show House. It was kind of Sherlockian. It was about a brilliant doctor who was also a jerk, but he solved the impossible cases no other doctor could. And usually he did it by finding out the lie. “Everybody lies,” he said in one episode. It became kind of a mantra. Everybody lies. That’s original sin. That’s the human condition. And the writers, whether they knew it or not, were quoting Scripture (funny since House claimed to be an Atheist). All men are liars. Everybody lies.
The twisted irony is that we know it and we like it. We want the preacher to lie to us. We want him, need him to tell us, It shall be well with you. No disaster shall come upon you.
But that’s a lie! It won’t be well with you. Disaster is coming upon you. That disaster is death. You are not well. You are sick. From birth you are dying.
That’s the judgment of God upon all mankind. And you also deserve the judgment of everlasting death. Disaster is at your door because you have lived as if God did not matter and as if you mattered most. You have shown up in the church to pray and sing, Lord, Lord! and yet live as workers of lawlessness.
Not the lawlessness of civil unrest; rioting in the streets and committing violence against the police. Your lawlessness is much more subtle. It is a lawlessness which says, “I will go to sleep tonight without asking God for forgiveness of my sins.” It is a lawlessness which says, “Pornography doesn’t hurt anyone.” It is a lawlessness which says, “The rules of business are in a different sphere than the Word of God, so I can bend the truth to get ahead.” It is a lawlessness that leads you to use your words to speak ill of others, to gossip, to complain, to assert that things are unfair.
Have you used the Gospel to say that your sins don’t matter? They do matter. That’s not the Gospel. The Gospel doesn’t mean that sins don’t matter. The Gospel is that in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ sins are forgiven. It was a costly forgiveness.
What does Jeremiah say? Behold, the storm of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intentions of His heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.
These are the latter days. And it is understood clearly only by looking at the crucifix. There, on Good Friday, behold the storm of the Lord. The whirling tempest of God’s wrath burst upon the head of Jesus the wicked! For there on the cross He was declared to be the wicked One. The Adulterer, the Cheat, the Gossip, the Liar. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.
There the strange, mysterious, incredible, horrible, awe-filled intents of God’s heart were executed. There, at the cross, God said to us, “Do you think sin is insignificant? Behold, this is what must happen to sin. This is what I do to the man who sins. I put Him to death.” Pilate said, Behold the Man. And there is Man, the Man, Adam, our father, our brother, there is God in our own flesh. Dead. For you. That is the storm of the Lord. There is your Hope.
Each day, as we are surrounded by vision-casting pastors preaching death, echoing in our hearts the sermon of the world and our flesh, we are reminded anew of the storm of the Lord. Today we are reminded that not everyone who cries out Lord, Lord! will enter the kingdom of heaven. Who enters? The one who does the will of the Lord. What is that will? That you repent and believe anew the true Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all your sins in Jesus Christ and His shed blood.
The church is not built on a vision that God gives to me or anyone. Your life is not built on following your heart. Your life and the one, Holy, Christian and apostolic Church are built on the same thing: the cross of Jesus Christ, the storm of the Lord. We know what Jesus does to storms. He makes them cease. By His Word. Be still.
So come forward, then, wash your hands and your hearts in His innocence and go around the altar of the Lord. Eat with your mouth that Word made flesh and be still. Repent, for the storm of the Lord will cease. Be still. Be at peace in Jesus. Who does not excuse sins, but forgives them.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
One of the most prominent mega-churches in America boasts that they are “built on the vision God gave Pastor Steven. We will aggressively defend our unity and that vision.” While this church - if it can even be called that - is exceptional in that they have had wild numerical growth, with multi-site campuses, they are pretty typical of a new breed of church that is emerging today. All centered around a dynamic leader with a “vision.”
It’s not just a “vision” in the sense of a hope or aspiration. The leaders of such churches claim to be receiving direct revelations from God. They are not pastors. They are false prophets. And the result? The church is built on the vision of the man - a vision that cannot be questioned or opposed - rather than built on the foundation of the Word of God, Christ Jesus Himself the cornerstone.
This is a new kind of papacy, where the authoritative, infallible ruler of the church is not the Bishop of Rome, but every pastor with a vision.
The problem of the dreamer-pastor spinning his visions to beguile the masses is not a new problem. It wasn’t new when Martin Luther dared question the false doctrine of Roman Catholic indulgences while simultaneously opposing the radical reformers shouting about their own visions and writing to defend the holy Christian Church from the barbarism of the Turks. I guess much hasn’t changed. One can see false pastors, false shepherds, false prophets in every age.
The Lord warned about these dreamers as we heard in Jeremiah: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. I did not speak to them, says the Lord, yet they prophesied.
The foundation of the Church is not a dream of a vision given to an individual or even a team of like-minded hyper-spiritualists. The foundation of the Church is the Word of God recorded for you in Holy Scripture. Don’t listen to “new” revelations and dreams. Everything you need has already been given to you in Holy Scripture.
It would be easy to simply reject the visionary-pastor out of knee-jerk conservatism. To mock his gimmicks or laugh at his style. But this is not a matter of protecting turf or being “old-school” or rejecting change. Its a matter of life and death. The Lord warns of false prophets because false prophets preach false doctrine. And believing false doctrine, no matter how sincerely, damns. The disciple of Jesus puts this one truth before everything else: Jesus, the incarnate God, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, is the final revelation, the final statement, the final Word of God. There is nothing else.
The cold, hard reality is this: you are a sinner. Light-shows and rock bands, soft-peddling the Law or watering down the Gospel, can’t escape this reality. You are a sinner. Jesus was crucified for your sins. No we wait for the end. That’s it. No new dreams. No new visions. No new revelations. It. Is. Finished.
Except that the message of the lying prophet is alluring precisely because he tells you what you want to hear. Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. We want hope. We want our politicians to give us hope. We want our doctors to give us hope. We want out coaches to give us hope. And we certainly want someone who claims to speak for God to give us hope.
So hope is what the false preacher offers. Hope is what the false prophet sells. Hope of a vague heaven. Hope of a better life now. Jeremiah tells us the core of the false message of the dreamer, the visionary pastor: It shall be well with you; and, No disaster shall come upon you.
That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But pay attention to whom these words are spoken. To the one who stubbornly follows his own heart. Now that’s a popular sermon preached not only from every false pastor’s pulpit, but from every politician’s dais and every self-helper’s blog. Yes, everything preaches. And sometimes they use words. But this is the overwhelming sermon of our culture: “Follow your heart.” People get married - and divorced - following their heart. They join churches, leave churches, move to new cities, buy new cars, amputate their genitals, do whatever seems right in their own eyes, and its all validates, its all justified, whatever it is, whatever you want to do, so long as you follow your heart. How can you argue with that?
What does Holy Scripture say about your heart? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer 17:9) Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander (Mt 15:19).
Following your heart might be the worst advice you could possibly get. Your heart lies to you; tells you what your flesh wants. And when it comes to spiritual things, your heart really lies to you. The theological term for this is original sin or inherited sin. It refers not to the sin of our first parents, but to the condition, the spiritual condition in which every one of us is born. One of the Confessions of the Church puts it this way: “The entire notion that a person is righteous is mere hypocrisy before God. We must acknowledge that our heart is, by nature, destitute of fear, love, and trust in God” (Ap II 33). The Reformers saw our human nature described in just four short words from Psalm 116: All men are liars.
I used to watch the TV show House. It was kind of Sherlockian. It was about a brilliant doctor who was also a jerk, but he solved the impossible cases no other doctor could. And usually he did it by finding out the lie. “Everybody lies,” he said in one episode. It became kind of a mantra. Everybody lies. That’s original sin. That’s the human condition. And the writers, whether they knew it or not, were quoting Scripture (funny since House claimed to be an Atheist). All men are liars. Everybody lies.
The twisted irony is that we know it and we like it. We want the preacher to lie to us. We want him, need him to tell us, It shall be well with you. No disaster shall come upon you.
But that’s a lie! It won’t be well with you. Disaster is coming upon you. That disaster is death. You are not well. You are sick. From birth you are dying.
That’s the judgment of God upon all mankind. And you also deserve the judgment of everlasting death. Disaster is at your door because you have lived as if God did not matter and as if you mattered most. You have shown up in the church to pray and sing, Lord, Lord! and yet live as workers of lawlessness.
Not the lawlessness of civil unrest; rioting in the streets and committing violence against the police. Your lawlessness is much more subtle. It is a lawlessness which says, “I will go to sleep tonight without asking God for forgiveness of my sins.” It is a lawlessness which says, “Pornography doesn’t hurt anyone.” It is a lawlessness which says, “The rules of business are in a different sphere than the Word of God, so I can bend the truth to get ahead.” It is a lawlessness that leads you to use your words to speak ill of others, to gossip, to complain, to assert that things are unfair.
Have you used the Gospel to say that your sins don’t matter? They do matter. That’s not the Gospel. The Gospel doesn’t mean that sins don’t matter. The Gospel is that in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ sins are forgiven. It was a costly forgiveness.
What does Jeremiah say? Behold, the storm of the LORD! Wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest; it will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intentions of His heart. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.
These are the latter days. And it is understood clearly only by looking at the crucifix. There, on Good Friday, behold the storm of the Lord. The whirling tempest of God’s wrath burst upon the head of Jesus the wicked! For there on the cross He was declared to be the wicked One. The Adulterer, the Cheat, the Gossip, the Liar. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.
There the strange, mysterious, incredible, horrible, awe-filled intents of God’s heart were executed. There, at the cross, God said to us, “Do you think sin is insignificant? Behold, this is what must happen to sin. This is what I do to the man who sins. I put Him to death.” Pilate said, Behold the Man. And there is Man, the Man, Adam, our father, our brother, there is God in our own flesh. Dead. For you. That is the storm of the Lord. There is your Hope.
Each day, as we are surrounded by vision-casting pastors preaching death, echoing in our hearts the sermon of the world and our flesh, we are reminded anew of the storm of the Lord. Today we are reminded that not everyone who cries out Lord, Lord! will enter the kingdom of heaven. Who enters? The one who does the will of the Lord. What is that will? That you repent and believe anew the true Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all your sins in Jesus Christ and His shed blood.
The church is not built on a vision that God gives to me or anyone. Your life is not built on following your heart. Your life and the one, Holy, Christian and apostolic Church are built on the same thing: the cross of Jesus Christ, the storm of the Lord. We know what Jesus does to storms. He makes them cease. By His Word. Be still.
So come forward, then, wash your hands and your hearts in His innocence and go around the altar of the Lord. Eat with your mouth that Word made flesh and be still. Repent, for the storm of the Lord will cease. Be still. Be at peace in Jesus. Who does not excuse sins, but forgives them.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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