Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear baptized friends of Christ, perhaps you remember taking true or false tests in school. Today Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading that we Christians will face many spiritual true or false tests throughout our lives, and we don't have the luxury of guessing, because the stakes are too high. So we need to know the right answers, and the Good News is that Jesus gives them to us-we don't have to come up with them on our own.

Our first true or false test as Christians is to test whether each prophet we encounter is true or false. Jesus said, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits." When Jesus speaks here of prophets, He is referring to anyone who talks about God or claims to speaks on behalf of God. This can include pretty much everyone, but primarily prophets will be those who speak publicly, like preachers. According to Jesus, these sneaky false prophets will come to us looking quite harmless, like a gentle sheep, but their intentions are deadly, like a wolf.

If you are taken by these false prophets and eaten up by believing their false teachings, your soul could be destroyed. This is a test with eternal life or death as the outcome, so the critical question is, "How will we spot them?" Jesus says we will recognize false prophets by their fruits. What is the fruit of a prophet? His words! We will recognize whether a prophet is true or false by whether the words coming out of his mouth are true or false. And here Jesus is mainly talking about doctrinal truth-the truth about God and His will.

I could give lots of examples of false doctrine taught by televangelists like Joel Osteen, or from pastors in other pulpits, but you also have to watch out for false prophets on regular television, too. It seems that everyone likes to think of himself as an expert on Christianity. Someone sent me a video of the Mormon talk show host Glenn Beck talking about liberation theology, and not everything he said was incorrect, but he really was quite confused on the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. He said, "Salvation is by grace alone, not by works…but you have to make the choice to accept it." The problem is that choosing is a work, which puts you outside of grace and back into a salvation by works system. How can you ever know whether you have truly, completely accepted God's grace, or given your heart to Jesus? It creates a great deal of uncertainty for people, when they have to rely on their own choice and commitment. Either they become fearful and despair of their salvation, or else they become secure and complacent in their self-righteous confidence that they chose Jesus. So on this topic of choice, Glenn Beck is clearly a false prophet.

But how did I test Beck's words? How did I verify whether they were true or false? I held Beck's teaching up next to God's Word, the Bible, where Jesus Himself says to His disciples, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit". On the topic of choice, we must go with Jesus, who is "the Way and the Truth and the Life." Since Jesus has warned us about false prophets, we must have a sanctified skepticism toward prophets and test whether they are proclaiming clear teachings from the Scriptures. St. John wrote in his first epistle, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world". Don't believe what you hear from the false prophets in this world, but test their words against the clear Scriptures to see if they are true.

On the other hand, when Jesus tells us to watch out for false prophets, He is implying that there are true prophets as well, and that we should be on the lookout for them, so that we may listen to what they have to say. A true prophet will offer true doctrine. St. John wrote, "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God". Then St. John points us back to the Bible by saying, "We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." That is, the words recorded in the Bible by the apostles are the true Words of God by which we are to judge whether today's prophets are true and false.

In the New Testament, the Lord commanded that men go out and preach His Word and be faithful and true to the words given to them by Jesus, through the apostles. The apostles wrote letters, which were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and in those letters the apostles instructed those who received their letters to faithfully believe, teach, and confess what was transmitted to them in those epistles (1 Timothy 4:11; 6:2). Christians are to preserve the divine truth as the Lord had given it to them in the divine Word.

What is at stake here? Is this matter no more important than a true/false quiz in history class? Hardly! The Bible teaches that salvation is at stake here. True doctrine from God saves sinners from eternal death. That is why the true prophet / false prophet test is so important. The apostle Paul encouraged young pastor Timothy, "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers". True teaching of the Gospel saves both preachers and hearers. So you can understand that when I, as a called and ordained servant of Christ, am teaching Bible class and preaching, I have a vested self-interest in teaching you the truth of God's Word. If I fail to carefully watch what I teach you and let some satanic error slip in, I could destroy my own salvation and yours as well, if you believe that false doctrine. And so if you ever think I have slipped into error in my teaching, I beg you to tell me, because the true doctrine of the Gospel saves, while the false doctrine of self-righteousness damns. Life and death are at stake when it comes to teaching and preserving pure Christian doctrine!

We must strive to preserve true doctrine in the Christian church. As Lutherans, we have done this by binding ourselves to the Scriptures and upholding them as the only source of true doctrine; the Bible alone judges whether teaching is true or false. And we also have bound ourselves to documents that are true and faithful summaries of the Bible's teachings, including the creeds: the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds; and in our Lutheran Book of Concord, which includes the Small Catechism, we present true doctrines and condemn false doctrines which have popped up in the church in the centuries since the Bible was written. So we Lutherans have great resources for spotting false prophets and true ones, if only we would make use of these resources through Bible class and study of the Bible, the Small Catechism, and the Book of Concord.

At this point, you should be aware that we Lutherans are in the minority of people in the world because we still believe in absolute truths and absolute falsehoods. We are considered foolish by the world for believing the Bible. How could such an unsophisticated old book be relevant today? Our talk of true and false prophets is laughed at by many of our neighbors because they have given up on the idea of anything being absolutely true or absolutely false; completely right or completely wrong; truly righteous or truly sin. This is easy to see when it comes to morality, where our culture says "Anything goes! Do whatever you want! If it feels good, then it must be right!" But if we hold to the moral teachings of the Bible, we will be truly out of step with the prevailing winds of our culture. If we truly believe God's Word, we can't wink and nod at sin and go along with the rampant immorality; we can't say that it's okay to go down the broad, easy road of shame and vice.

But morality is only the tip of the iceberg. The most serious test we Christians face has to do with confessing true prophecy about God, that is, theology and doctrine. If basic morality has been rejected today, that pales in comparison with the almost wholesale rejection of true Christian teaching that has occurred in our midst. In the media, in schools, on the Internet, in everyday conversations, it is commonly accepted that every individual should reach his or her own opinion about the way things are in religion, and an individual's opinion is the final judge of what is true and false. Like the first sin in the Garden of Eden, each sinner wants to be like God, authorized to declare what is true and what is false.

But Jesus offers us something different. He says to the world, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me". You'll notice that Jesus did not say, "I might be the way, and I am an opinion, and maybe I'm the life. And sure, anyone can come to the Father, even without Me."

No, with Jesus, things are not up in the air and uncertain, subject to individual opinion; with Jesus, things are rock solid, certain, sure: He is the Way to God the Father, He is the Truth that alone can save us, and He gives us His eternal Life through His Word and Sacraments in the Holy Christian Church. And the truth is, we didn't choose Jesus as the Way and the Truth and the Life, because as sinners, we actually reject Him by our sinful rebelliousness against His Word.

And so the true Word of God cries out to us again today, calling us to repentance. St. Paul wrote, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." St. John also wrote, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. [When] we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" . If we excuse our sins against God and say that we actually have no sin; if we insist that we have always been true to God's Word and do not have any sins that need forgiveness, then we are practicing self-deception and Jesus, who is the Truth, does not dwell in us. If we say that we have no sin, then no matter how much we claim to believe in God, no matter how much we say that Jesus is our Lord, still we will be in for a truly rude awakening on Judgment Day.

But when we confess our sins, when we say that God's just judgment on our sins is true and not false, when we throw ourselves at the mercy of our Lord, then we discover forgiveness and cleansing from sin more bountiful than anything we ever could have dreamed of. Dear friends, our Lord Jesus truly died to pay for every last one of your sins, even the ones you are not aware that you have committed. In fact, He died for all sinners to reconcile them to God by His death, and His perfect sacrifice is now put before us in the Gospel to be received by faith, as God's free gift. That is the Truth!

In school, every student longs for free passing grades and for the teacher to overlook errors. God does even more than that for us because of what Jesus has done for us. Jesus has taken the test for us and has passed every test the Father gave Him. When Satan tested Jesus' faithfulness to God by tempting Him with earthly power and goods, Jesus held to the truthfulness of God's Word and did not waver for an instant. Throughout His ministry, when Jesus was presented with opportunities to turn away from His path to the cross, He remained true to His Father's commands.

This is the glorious truth of the Gospel: that Jesus loved us so much that He laid down His life so that He might give us true, lasting, eternal life. God is so merciful and kind that He simply gives you a perfect score for free, on account of His Son. What must be true in our worldly schools is false in the Kingdom of God: perfect scores are not earned, but are freely given!

When Jesus said to His apostles, "Go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them," another way to translate disciples is "students." You have been made students of Jesus Christ by being baptized into His church and taught the Christian Faith. And though the lives of students are full of difficult tests, Jesus gives us the most important answers we need throughout all our days to ensure us that our sins are forgiven and we have been reconciled to God. Take this little quiz:

• True or false: Your Baptism into Christ's death and resurrection is "a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit" and has made you a beloved child of God.
• True or false: The words of Absolution that I pronounced at the beginning of the service: "I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"; those words send your sins as far away from you as East is from West.
• True or false: In the Lord's Supper, Jesus gives us His true body and blood under the bread and wine as a pledge and seal of the salvation which He achieved for us by His life, death, and resurrection.

True, true, and true! God has given you eternal life freely for the sake of Jesus and He now sustains your perfect grade point average by watering you daily with your Baptism, cleansing your conscience through the Word of forgiveness, and feeding you with the life-giving body and blood of Jesus. The truth is that those Means of Grace will keep you under God's grace and sustain your life of faith. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.