TEST YOUR TEACHERS - Oswald Chambers
In these verses Jesus tells His disciples to test preachers and teachers by their fruit. There are two tests one is the fruit in the life of the preacher, and the other is the fruit of the doctrine. The fruit of a man s own life may be perfectly beautiful, and at the same time he may be teaching a doctrine which if logically worked out would produce the devil s fruit in other lives. It is easy to be captivated by a beautiful life and to argue that therefore what that life teaches must be right. Jesus says Be careful, test your teacher by his fruit. The other side is just as true, a man may be teaching beautiful truths and have magnificent doctrine while the fruit in his own life is rotten. We say that if a man, lives a beautiful life, his doctrine must be right; not necessarily so, says Jesus. Then again, we say because a man teaches the right thing therefore his life must be right; not necessarily so, says Jesus. Test the doctrine by its fruit and test the teacher by his fruit. If the son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed,” the freedom of the nature will work out.
By their fruits ye shall know them.” You do not gather the vindictive mood from the Holy Ghost; you do not gather the passionately irritable mood from the patience of God; you do not gather the self-indulgent mood and the lust of the flesh in private life from the Spirit of God. God never allows room for any of these moods.
We find that as we study the Sermon on the Mount we are badgered by the Spirit of God from every standpoint, in order to bring us into a simplicity of relationship to Jesus Christ. The standard is that of a child depending on God. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Our Lord here is describing dangerous teachers, and He warns us of those who come clothed in right doctrine but inwardly their spirit is that of Satan.
It is appallingly easy to pretend. If once we get our eyes off Jesus, pious pretense is sure to follow. 1 John I. 7 is the essential condition for the life of the saint ” If we walk in the light as God is in the light,” i.e., with nothing folded up, nothing to hide. Immediately we depend on anything other than our relationship to God, the possibility of pretense comes in, pious pretense, not hypocrisy (a hypocrite is one who tries to live a twofold life for his own ends and succeeds), but a desperately sincere effort to be right when we know we are not.
I have to beware of pretense in myself. It is an easy business to look what I am not; it is easy to talk and to preach, and to preach my actual life to damnation. It was realizing this made Paul say, ” I keep under my body . . . lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway.” The more facile the expression in words, the less likely is the truth to be carried out in life. A preacher has a peril that the listener has not, the peril of being able to express a thing, and the expression reacts in the exhaustion of never doing it. That is where fasting has to come in fasting from eloquence, from fine literary finish, from all that natural culture makes us esteem, if it is going to lead us into a harping walk with God. This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” Fasting is much more than doing without food, that is the least part, it is fasting from all that manifests self-indulgence. There is a certain mood in us all which delights in frank speaking, but we never intend to do what we say, we are ” enchanted but unchanged.” The frank man is the unreliable man, much more so than the subtle, crafty man, because he has the power of expressing the thing clean out and there is nothing more to it.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? This warning is against over-zealousness on the part of heresy-hunters. Our Lord would have us bide our time. Luke IX. 53-55 is a case in point. Take heed that you do not allow carnal suspicion to take the place of the discernment of the Spirit. Fruit and fruit alone is the test. If I see the fruit in a life showing itself as thistles, Jesus says you will know the wrong root is there, for you do not gather thistles off any root but a thistle but remember that it is quite possible in wintertime to mistake a rose tree for something else unless you are expert in judging. So, there is a place for patience, and Our Lord would have us heed it. Wait for the fruit to manifest itself and don t be guided by your own fancy. It is easy to get alarmed and to persuade myself that my particular convictions are the standard of Christ, and to condemn everyone to perdition who does not agree with me; I am obliged to do it because my convictions have taken the place of God in me. God’s Book never tells us to walk in the light of convictions, but in the light of the Lord.
Always distinguish between those who object to your way of presenting the Gospel and those who object to the Gospel itself. There may be many who object to your way of presenting the truth, but that does not necessarily mean that they object to God’s making them holy. Make a place for patience. Wait before you pass your verdict. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Wrong teaching produces its fruit just as right teaching does if you give it time.
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” If I say I am right with God, the world has a perfect right to watch my private life and see if I am; if I say I am born again, I am put under scrutiny, and rightly so. If the performance of my life is to be steadily holy, the principle of my life must be holy, i.e., if I am going to bring forth good fruit, I must have a good root. It is possible for an aeroplane to imitate a bird, and it is possible for a human being to imitate the fruit of the Spirit. The vital difference is the same in each: there is no principle of life behind. The aeroplane cannot per sist, it can only fly spasmodically; and my imitation of the Spirit requires certain conditions which keep me from the public gaze, then I can get on fairly well. Before I can have the right performance in my life, I must have the principle inside right I must know what it is to be born from above, to be sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, then my life will bring forth the fruit. Fruit is clearly expounded in the Epistles, and it is quite different from the gifts of the Spirit, or from the manifest seal of God on His own word, it is the “fruit of the Spirit.” Fruit- bearing is always mentioned as the manifestation of an intimate union with Jesus.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” Jesus makes publicity the test, He lived His own life most publicly (see John XVIII. 20). The thing that enraged Our Lord s enemies was the public manner in which He did things, His miracles were the public manifestation of His power. To-day people are annoyed at public testimony. There is no use saying Oh yes, I live a holy life, but I don t say anything about it. Then you certainly don t, for the two go together. If a thing has its root in the heart of God, it will want to be public, to get out, it must do things in the external and the open, and Jesus not only encouraged this publicity, but he also insisted on it. For good or bad, things must be dragged out. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.” It is God s law that men cannot hide what they really are. If they are His disciples, it will be publicly portrayed. In Matthew X. Jesus warned His disciples what would happen when they publicly testified, but, He says, don’t hide your light under a bushel for fear of wolfish men; be careful only that you don t go contrary to your duty and have your soul destroyed in hell as well as your body. Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Our Lord warns that the man who will not be conspicuous as His disciple will be made to be conspicuous as His enemy. As sure as God is on His throne, the inevitable principle must work, the revealing of what men really are.
One of the dangers of the Higher Christian Life movement is the hole-and-corner aspect you must have secret times alone with God. God drags everything out to the sun. Paul couples’ sanctification and fornication, meaning that every type of high spiritual emotion that is not worked out on its legitimate level will react on a wrong level. To be in contact with external facts is necessary to health in the natural world, and the same thing is true spiritually. God s spiritual open air is the Bible. The Bible is the universe of revelation facts, if I live there my roots will be healthy and my life right. There is no use saying ” I once had an experience;” the point is where is it now? Pay attention to the Source, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. It is possible to be so taken up with conscious experience in religious life that we are of no use at all.
