Good afternoon.
Take your Bibles, if you will,
and open them to Ezekiel.
Ezekiel chapter thirteen is where we will
take our lesson from
and we will essentially stay in this text
for the duration of our study.
As you travel, as you interact with
Christians throughout
the world, as I have had the opportunity
to do over the last few years,
one of the things that you note is that
not everyone has
the same perspective about false teachers.
That some
Are of a mindset that there really aren’t
false teachers,
at least in those who claim to believe in
Christ.
And yet the scripture looks at the concept
of false teachers, or as is more often
referred in the Old Testament,
especially, false prophets, very
differently.
And in Ezekiel chapter 13,
God, through Ezekiel, is going to
confront.
The false prophets in Israel. So this
afternoon we’re going to spend some time
dealing with the truth of false prophets
and false teachers.
Because they do exist. They existed in
Ezekiel’s day,
they existed in the first century,
they existed among the early Christians,
and they exist today.
But consider a few of the things that we
learn about false teachers
as Ezekiel is commanded by God to deal
with them in Israel.
Now, a little bit of background of the
book of Ezekiel that will maybe perhaps
set a frame around what is going on.
Ezekiel, if you read through the book,
is is going to be writing this books from
the shores of the river in Shushan.
He is going to be there in captivity.
He is part of those who were taken away in
captivity during one
of the earlier carryings away by Babylon.
And it is during the time of exile,
much the same as the book of Daniel,
that Ezekiel is going to write and give
his prophecies.
Now, some of the prophets that we read
about in the
Old Testament were oratory prophets.
They would go out and they would speak
their message to the people.
But it seems as though with Ezekiel that
he was primarily a writing prophet,
because the audience that he was writing
to,
that his prophecies were delivered to,
were the Israelites back in Israel.
And his audience was not primarily those
who were already in exile,
but those who were not yet in exile.
Also, you have the time frame.
The time frame of the book of Ezekiel is
likely between the second carrying away
and the third carrying away. So there was
the first carrying away where
Nebuchadnezzar came down and required
tribute and took the young people from
the noble families like Daniel,
Hananiah, Azrah, and Mishal. That was the
first carrying away.
The bulk of the people remained in the
land.
The second carrying away, Nebuchadnezzar
came back twenty years later and
he took a larger swath of the people.
I think it’s actually ten years later,
and I’m not sure what’s causing that,
but hopefully it’ll quit. ~ ten years
later he comes back and takes another
cohort
of the people, this time a much larger
cohort,
but still the majority of the people are
in the land.
Then the third carrying away, again ten
years later,
Nebuchadnezzar will come, and essentially
he will clean out the nation
of everyone except for the old,
the lame, and a few of the poor.
And they will remain in the land,
and ultimately Jeremiah, being an old man
by the time this occurs,
will actually remain in the land as well,
and they will force him to go with them
down to Egypt.
But it’s in between the second and the
third carrying away that Ezekiel
is writing to the Israelites at God’s
command.
We open chapter 13 and we read in verse 1.
And the word of the Lord came to me,
saying, Son of man, prophesy against the
prophets of Israel who prophesy.
Notice that there is a direct correlation.
Ezekiel, your prophecy is going to be
directed at the prophets
in Israel who prophesy. And God is going
to tell Ezekiel
to confront these prophets.
So consider very first that when it comes
to false prophets,
there is biblical authority to confront
them.
Is my mic going in and out? Okay.
It’s hard to tell.
There is biblical authority to confront
false prophets
and by extension false teachers.
Because we’re to see there’s no difference
between a false prophet
and a false teacher. They are ~ their
content of their message,
the origin of their message is exactly the
same.
In chapter 13 and in verse 2, we read:
Son of man.
Prophesy against the prophets of Israel
who prophesy and say to those
who prophesy out of their own heart,
hear the word of the Lord.
As Ezekiel is told by God to confront
these false prophets,
as he is given the authority to confront
them,
he’s not given his own authority.
God doesn’t tell Ezekiel, Ezekiel,
you go argue with them and you go make the
best argument you can.
No. God tells Ezekiel,
you prophesy against them, and you tell
them that what they’re about
to hear from you is actually the word of
the Lord.
In contrast to what it is that they
prophesy,
that they speak, because God says
They speak out of their own hearts.
One of the dangers that exist in
the church today is that there are too
many Christians trusting
how they feel about false teachers instead
of what the scripture says about them.
The problem with these false prophets was
that they trusted what they
thought.
And God says to Ezekiel, You need to go
set them straight and
you make sure they’re aware that when they
hear you,
they’re not hearing your opinion,
they’re hearing my words.
In chapter thirteen and in verse
seventeen,
because there’s two groups that Ezekiel is
going to prophesy against.
He’s going to prophesy against the false
prophets in Israel,
and there are a group of the daughters of
Israel,
who he is also going to prophesy against.
Verse seventeen, likewise, son of man,
set your face against the daughters of
your people,
who prophesy out of their own heart,
prophesy against them.
And say, Thus says the Lord God,
Woe to the women who sew magic charms on
their sleeves,
and make veils for their heads of people
of every height to hunt souls.
Will you hunt the souls of my people and
keep yourselves alive?
Now, there could be a couple of different
connotations of this idea
of the hunting of the souls of people,
but what you probably can gain from this
is during a siege
by an army, one of the things that
invariably happened,
if a siege lasted long enough,
is the people started to starve.
And so you had those who were willing
to kill their own countrymen.
To take what belonged to them to survive
the siege.
And we have ~ read and studied previously
occasions like that
in the Old Testament because the mindset
of the false teachers,
the mindset of the false prophets was:
the siege is going to be over,
Babylon’s going to go away, and we’re
going to survive.
So we have to do anything we can.
To survive and we’ll be fine. And God
says,
not how it’s going turn out. No,
you’re going away into captivity.
And the siege is not going to end until
you’re gone.
So consider that Ezekiel is going to
prophesy against and have authority
to prophesy against both the male prophets
in Israel and the female prophets
in Israel. But then consider the
accusation by God.
God is going to layer.
And lay forth a series of accusations
against these false teachers according
to the things that they actually do.
And this lines up as about seven different
things that
are consistently true about false
teachers.
Consider verse three. Thus says the Lord
God,
Woe to the foolish prophets who follow
their own spirit and have seen
nothing. The very first thing that God
accused these accuses these false prophets
of doing is that they follow their own
spirit.
They were claiming, as the prophets of the
Old Testament would claim,
rightfully so, to have seen visions.
They would say I was I was asleep in the
night and as I was sleeping and
my head was on my pillow I saw in my night
vision and this occurred
and this occurred and this occur occurred
and that means that ~ we’re we’re
all gonna be fine.
Now there were prophets who saw visions.
There were individuals who saw visions.
Even Nebuchadnezzar saw a vision.
And as that vision occurred, it originated
with God
and not his own spirit.
God is going to say concerning these false
prophets,
that’s not where their visions originate.
That’s not where their messages come from.
Their messages, their visions are dreamed
up out of their own mind.
see, they follow their own spirit.
You go down to verse four,
down through verse six, and you also find
that they are sent,
but they’re not sent by God. Verse four.
~ Israel, your prophets are like foxes in
the desert.
You have not gone up into the gaps to
build a wall for the house of Israel
to stand in battle on the day of the Lord.
They have envisioned futility and false
divination,
saying, Thus says the Lord, but the Lord
has not sent them,
yet they hope that the word may be
confirmed.
Ezekiel is going to describe the false
prophets through the word of the Lord,
and he says, ~ your false prophets are
like foxes in the wilderness.
Here’s the picture: Fox goes out,
he’s in the wilderness, it’s barren,
it’s deserted, he’s hungry.
And he’s going to kill whatever he finds
to survive.
God says your prophets are going to feast
on you.
They’re going to consume what you have for
their own benefit,
for their own good. But know this:
before they get started, they weren’t sent
by me.
Instead, what they should have been doing
if they were good prophets,
if they were prophets of the Lord,
is they would have looked at the wall and
they would have said,
There’s a hole in the wall. I’ll tell you
what,
instead of using the hole in the wall to
get in from the outside and
go steal from the people, how about I fix
the hole in the wall and I help defend
my people? God says, but that’s not what
your false prophets are going to do.
They’re not going to see the hole in the
wall and say,
let me repair the hole, let me stand in
the gap,
let me be a defense for my people against
her enemies.
No. Because they weren’t sent by me.
Then consider verses seven and eight.
God says they don’t speak the words of
God.
What is consistently true about false
prophets and false teachers throughout
all time is that they use the word of God,
but they don’t speak the word of God.
For if they spoke the word of God,
they’d be in agreement with God.
They’d be in agreement with the text.
They wouldn’t tear apart the context to
try and teach something that
it doesn’t teach. They wouldn’t conjure up
their own false doctrines
and their own false beliefs in order to
draw away people after themselves.
Notice verse 7 he says, Have you not seen
a feudal vision?
Have you not spoken false divination?
You say, the Lord says,
but I have not spoken.
Therefore, thus says the Lord God,
because you have spoken nonsense and
envisioned lies,
therefore I am indeed against you,
says the Lord God. He says, You didn’t
come up with this doctrine,
you didn’t come up with this teaching from
me.
You imagined it. You thought of a lie that
you could get away with,
and you taught it.
God says they don’t speak the words of
God.
But then you consider verse 10 down
through verse 16,
they seduced the people. You know,
when Paul writes to the church at Corinth
and he says,
I determined not to know anything among
you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I didn’t convince you with the words of
wisdom.
I didn’t use high intelligent words.
I didn’t use lofty oratory in order to
convince you of the truth of the gospel.
I gave it to you in simplicity and truth.
But that’s not the way false teachers
teach.
When you start unweaving the doctrines of
false teachers,
you start to realize that they speak
volumes of words and say nothing.
Verse 10, he says, Because indeed,
because they have seduced my people,
saying, Peace, where there is no peace.
And one builds a wall, and they plaster it
with untempered mortar.
Say to those who plaster it with
untempered mortar,
that it will fall. There will be flooding
rain,
and you, O great hailstones, shall fall.
And a stormy wind shall tear it down,
surely when the wall has fallen,
when it will not be said to you,
where is the mortar with which you
plastered it?
God begins to give an analogy,
we’ll go into that in detail in just a
moment,
but he says, You have one prophet coming
along and saying,
Peace to the people, when there is no
peace.
And another one of your prophets comes
along and and and covers up the holes
in the story.
To reinforce the lie. Verse fourteen So I
will break down the wall that
you have plastered with untempered mortar,
and bring it down to the ground so that
its foundation will be uncovered,
it will fall, and you shall be consumed in
the midst of it.
Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
Thus thus will I accomplish my wrath on
the wall and on those who have plastered
it with untempered mortar, and I will say
to you the wall is no more,
nor those who plastered it, that is,
the prophets of Israel who prophesy
concerning Jerusalem,
and who see visions of peace for her when
there is no peace,
says the Lord God.
God says, I know what you’re doing.
I know what you’re speaking. I know that
it comes out of your own heart.
I know that it comes out of your own mind.
I know that it comes out of your own
spirit.
I know it’s a lie because I know what
you’re teaching.
When someone teaches a doctrine that is
inconsistent with
the biblical text, that is inconsistent
with the truth of the gospel,
that you can look at and you go,
wait a minute, I know the Bible says this,
but they’re teaching this. Can both things
be true?
The answer is no.
And one thing you can know assuredly is if
they came to this conclusion there’s
something back there in their premise that
is false.
For even if they logically came to the
conclusion,
it means that they started with a faulty
premise.
These prophets started with a faulty
premise because they started with their
own words. Then verses 17 and 18 says.
We see that they adorn themselves so
as to become interesting to people.
In this case, it was the women prophets
who adorned themselves with magic
and with divination.
They’re willing to mix in the things of
the world.
They’re willing to mix in the doctrines of
demons.
They’re willing to weave in the things
that do not pertain to God
and did not originate with God.
As a matter of fact, they’re condemned by
God.
But they weave them into their lives and
to their teaching so
as to seduce the hearers. Verse 17
Likewise,
Son of Man, set your face against the
daughters of your people who prophesy
out of their own heart.
Prophesy against them and say,
Thus says the Lord, Woe to the women who
sew magic charms on their sleeves
and make veils for the heads of people of
every weight to hunt souls.
Will you hunt the souls of my people and
keep yourselves alive?
God says you can look at them and you can
identify who they are.
You can see the way they adorn themselves.
Now that does not mean that every false
teacher is gonna ~ be able
to walk around and you say, ~ see,
he’s wearing a blue suit coat this
morning.
That’s a false teacher.
No rather you see by their actions that
they’re in no way seeking
to hold fast exclusively to the Word of
God.
They’re willing to weave in these false
ideas.
~ go over, if you will, for just a moment
to consider this over to
the book of Galatians.
Paul as he’s writing to the church at
Galatians will write to these brethren.
And he will write to them and say,
I marvel, chapter 1, verse 6, that you are
turning away so soon from
him who called you in the grace of Christ
to a different gospel,
which is not another. But there are some
who trouble you and want,
notice what they want to do. They want to
pervert the gospel of Christ.
There are false teachers who desire it is
their evil.
inward desire to take what God gave that
was in simplicity and truth,
that which is clearly taught in Scripture,
and they want to corrupt it.
Because if they just teach the word of
God,
nobody follows them. If they just teach
the word of God,
nobody enriches them. If they just teach
the word of God,
they get no leverage over anyone.
But if they can come up with some new
doctrine,
if they can come up with some new idea,
if they can weave in a little bit of of
astrology into the Bible,
if they can weave in a little bit of
Jewish wisdom and tradition into the
Bible,
if they can weave in some of Calvinism
into the Bible,
if they can weave in some of Catholicism
into the Bible,
if they can we weave in some of
the ~ ideas from the far eastern religions
and meditation and these things into
the Bible, then they can create something
unique that will enrich them.
God says, You see how they adorn
themselves?
Now you know who they are. But then
consider chapter
13 and verse 19. What is also true of
false teachers is that they profane the
Lord.
Verse 19, and you will profane me among my
people,
he says of these women, for handfuls of
barley.
and for pieces of bread.
He says, I know what you’re doing,
and I know why you’re doing it.
Because people are going hungry.
And you’re willing to trade the truth for
food.
You’re willing to trade your knowledge of
what
I have done and what I have said and who I
am to make sure you stay alive.
He says, You’ve been willing to trade
these things for handfuls of barley,
for pieces of bread, killing people who
should not die,
and keeping people alive who should not
live.
By your lying, my people who listen to
lies.
God through Ezekiel accuses these women of
conjuring
up their lies to get, as it were,
the very last morsel from the poor,
to get the very last loaf of bread out of
a starving person’s house
so that they could live instead of that
person.
How many people? How many false teachers?
How many televists have told people?
If you’ll just send your last dollar to
our ministry,
God will bless you with hundreds and
hundreds in return.
But it’s a lie. It’s not the truth.
You remember the widow who Jesus stood
at the door of the temple and watched her
as she came in,
and the apostles watched her as she came
in,
and she took those two mites and she put
them into the treasury.
And Jesus observed concerning her that she
gave more than all the others
who gave out of their abundance.
For she gave all that she had.
You remember that verse that followed up
after it that God promised that she’d
end up with lands and peoples and servants
and riches beyond her imagination just
a year or so down the road? No,
you haven’t forgotten that verse.
That verse doesn’t exist. Jesus didn’t say
anything of the sort.
Jesus wasn’t talking about what she got
out of the giving in return
in physical terms, but rather spiritual
ones.
These women were seducing the people so
they could live
and the people would die. Because the only
people they cared about were themselves.
They profaned the name of God.
For their own bread. But then consider
number seven,
verse ~ verse twenty,
down to verse twenty-two. Therefore,
thus says the Lord, Behold, I am against
your magic charms,
by which you hunt souls like birds.
I will tear them from your arms and let
the souls go.
The souls you hunt like birds.
I will also tear off your veils and
deliver my people out of your hand,
and they shall no longer be as prey in
your hand.
Then you shall know that I am the Lord,
because with lies you have made the heart
of the righteous sad,
whom I have not made sad,
and you have strengthened the hands of the
wicked,
so that he does not turn from his wicked
way to save his life.
Seventh thing about false teachers is that
they make the heart of the righteous sad.
can tell you in travels that I’ve made and
trips that I’ve been
on how disheartening it is to see
the infection of false teaching amongst
our brethren,
especially overseas.
Where no one, not everywhere overseas,
but in many places where very few stand up
for the truth.
Where very few are willing to correct a
false teacher.
Where very few are willing to set the
record straight because they have
so few people who are Christians to begin
with to be in fellowship with.
God says concerning these false teachers,
you are discouraging my righteous people.
You are making their hearts sad,
and I didn’t do anything to make them sad.
God’s accusation against false teachers is
lined out throughout this chapter.
But then consider the analogy.
The analogy that God gives, and that is of
the untempered mortar.
You go back in the chapter back to verse
eight and we read My hand will
be against the prophets who envision
futility and who divine lies.
They shall not be in the assembly of my
people,
nor be written in the record of the house
of Israel.
Nor shall they enter into the land of
Israel,
then you shall know that I am the Lord
God.
Because indeed, because they have seduced
my people,
saying, Peace when there is no peace,
and one builds a wall and they plaster it
with untempered mortar.
He says, I’m gonna tell you what happens
with these false teachers.
One of them spins a lie.
And they spin a lie telling you God’s
going to defend you,
God’s going to allow Jerusalem to remain,
God would never destroy the city where he
put his name,
God would never bring the walls of
Jerusalem down.
God’s going to build a wall around this
city,
and we’re telling you that everything’s
going to be okay.
And another prophet comes along and
reinforces it.
The problem is he reinforced it with the
same lie.
He reinforced it with the same falsehood.
He reinforced it with the same half truth.
He says, when you take the mortar and you
put the mortar in between the stones,
if it’s good mortar, it’s going to lock
those stones in and it’s going to give
you a solid wall. But that’s not what this
mortar is.
Because this mortar is built off of a lie.
He goes on to say, Because indeed,
they say, because because indeed,
because they have seduced my people,
saying,
Peace when there is no peace, and one
builds a wall and plaster
it with untempered mortar, say to those
who plaster it with untempered mortar,
that it will fall. There will be flooding
rain,
and you, O great hailstone, shall fall,
and a stormy wind shall tear it down.
You remember what Jesus said concerning
the one who hears these things
of mine and does not do them? Jesus said,
I will liken him to like a man who builds
his house upon the sand,
and when the storms come, when the rains
come,
when the winds come, the
House will fall and great will be the fall
of it.
That’s what God’s saying about these false
teachers.
He says, You’re going to put your trust in
them,
Israel. You’re going to believe them when
they say peace,
peace when there is no peace. You’re going
to be assured that surely these things
are going to remain. Surely Jerusalem will
remain.
Surely we won’t be taken out of the land.
And you will make no preparation.
And more importantly, you won’t repent.
And as a result of the teaching of these
false teachers,
they’re going to fall and they’re going to
be your destruction.
You noticed he calls the false teachers
hailstones?
Here’s the picture. They build the wall,
they take the stones, they put the mortar
on it,
they assure the people the wall will
stand.
And yet God says you’re the very
hailstones that are gonna bring down the
wall.
You’re going to bring down the wall,
the wall you guaranteed the people would
never fall.
He goes on to say, Surely, when the wall
has fallen,
will it not be said to you, Where is the
mortar with which you plastered it?
As they look in the midst of the storm,
and the mortar’s all washed away,
and the wall crumbles.
Someone’s gonna come along to the false
teachers and say,
Wait a minute. I saw you build the wall.
I saw you put the mortar in. Where’d it
go?
It won’t be there.
Therefore, thus says the Lord,
I will cause a stormy wind to break forth
in my fury,
and there shall be flooding rain in my
anger,
and great hailstones in fury to consume
it.
So I will break down the wall you have
plastered with untempered mortar,
and bring it down to the ground so that
its foundation will be uncovered,
it will fall, and you shall be consumed in
the midst of it.
And here’s the thing God keeps.
Saying over and over and over again,
then you shall know that I am the Lord.
So we come to our last and final point,
the antithesis of false teachers is the
message that
you find again and again and again in this
chapter.
Verse twenty three, therefore you shall no
longer envision futility,
nor practice divination, for I will
deliver my people out of your hand,
and you shall know that I am the Lord.
The antithesis of false teachers is God.
It is the Lord himself.
The furthest thing you can get from a
false teacher is the Lord.
And so when we consider false teachers,
when we consider false prophets,
when we consider those who would take
Christianity and the Word of God
and mingle it with falsehood to teach
something that the New Testament
and the Scriptures never teach,
we don’t say, well,
at least they believe in Jesus.
No, they don’t. Consider the antithesis of
a false teacher.
Is God. The furthest thing you can get
from someone
who uses God’s name for their own ends is
God.
For God never commands such. God didn’t
send them.
Their word didn’t originate with God.
Their message came out of their own mind,
out of their own spirit, out of their own
dreams,
out of their own lies, for their own
selfish purposes.
Because they don’t follow God.
They use God’s words to get people to
follow them.
We need to be careful when it comes to
false teachers.
We need to be careful to never become
false teachers.
Paul in Acts chapter 20 will meet with the
elders of the church at Ephesus,
and he will tell them that he,
while he was in their presence,
had not shunned to declare unto them the
whole council of God.
But then he also warned them. He said,
After my departure, there shall come in
among you wolves.
From among yourselves,
teaching perverse things to draw away the
flock after themselves.
Paul says your false teachers are going to
come from the inside,
and you’re going to have to deal with it.
We need to be those who are mindful of the
doctrine of Christ and shun those
who speak profane things against the Lord.
If you’re here this afternoon and you have
need of the imitation of Christ
to be converted, not to a denomination,
not to a sect, not to somebody who says,
we’re just a part of the Lord’s church.
We’re just one part that teaches something
slightly different than what others
teach. Rather, to be converted to the
church,
to the Lord’s church, to the first century
church,
to what it is that God established on the
day of Pentecost that Jesus.
shed his blood to purchase. We can help
you with that.
Not because it’s what we claim about
ourselves.
But because when the scripture speaks,
that’s where we stand. And when the
scripture says not to do something,
that’s where we stand. And when the
scripture says that something is false,
that’s where we stand. Because we seek
continually to hold ourselves
to the Word of God.
And not to men. If you have need of the
invitation for any reason,
why not come as we stand and as we sing?
