Wolves in sheep clothing

Call To Prayer

Title: Wolves in sheep clothing

By: Njuacha Hubert

Date: 17.08.2024

15“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?   Matthew 7:15-16 NIV

Jesus warns us seriously about false prophets. In fact, you can almost feel the desperation in the tone of his words. He says they might claim to be men of God but inside they are dangerous wolves. So again, incase you didn’t know why we must be careful of false prophets. Jesus makes it clear; because they are ferocious wolves. They have the same mission(role) as the devil; to kill, to steal and to destroy (John 10:10).

After Jesus warns us about false prophets, he immediately gives us the method to identify a false prophet. He says “By their fruit you will recognize them”. You don’t need to wait for a vision or an angel to tell you that this is a false prophet. Rather use your God given senses and discern the fruit. So it brings us to the question what is this fruit Jesus is talking about?

Jesus himself hinted about this fruit in the same chapter 7 of Mathew where the opening verse comes from. He explains how he will recognise his own on the last day (Mathew 7:24-27). It won’t be about the miracles or signs and wonders, for those are by faith in the power of Jesus’ name and not necessarily by relationship with Jesus (Luke 9:49-50, Mark 11:22-24). Rather Jesus recognises his own as those who do God’s will and what is God’s will; love your neighbour. The apostles further wrote about this fruit of love (also called the fruits of the spirit) which includes things like faithfulness, self control, kindness, meekness etc (Galatians 5:22-23). So in summary this talks about walking in love or holiness. Any one who does not walk in love doesn’t know the father intimately and is therefore dangerous (1 John 4: 7- 19). Observe their life or actions.

Another aspect of this fruit is the teaching of a prophet. You can see this is 1 John 4 where it talks about testing spirits to know who is a false prophet. So it basically says anyone that denies the incarnation (that is that Jesus Christ is not God made flesh) is an Antichrist. Again, we see in Galatians 3:1-14 how Paul was fighting to unteach the Galatians from the harmful teachings of false teachers for they were teaching salvation by works instead of by faith. Now one may teach falsely in ignorance but still he qualifies as a false prophet and is therefore dangerous because he is leading others astray. However in such a case if he is genuinely a sincere prophet of God he can be delivered by the truth and prayer.

In conclusion, we must observe the fruit of prophets to know where they currently stand, which is by their consistent actions and teachings. Be careful of false prophets !

Prayer Point:

Let’s thank our Lord Jesus for giving us the key to discerning a false prophet, observation according to knowledge of the truth. Let’s pray that the church will be equipped with the understanding of what is good fruit and that good trees don’t bear bad fruit and vice versa.