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Guest (Male): Welcome to Key Life. Today, part two of a sermon from Steve called Fresh Word From God. And this message is brought to you by the Vault Project. Grace is forever, but reel-to-reel tape isn't. That's why we're on a mission to digitize these classic messages from Steve before they're lost forever. Support this work for as little as $5 a month while also getting access to those sermons. More info at keylife.org/vault. Now, here's Steve.

Steve Brown: What makes you think you're prepared to be the president of a theological seminary? And I was free. Why? Because God doesn't act in a vacuum. He prepares you in the past for what he's going to call you to do today. And whatever you're going to do today, all of the past is prerequisite that you might be obedient to the son of God.

A pastor friend of mine told me last week about a man in his church who was a first-class pediatrician. He said, "Steve, this pediatrician is being called of God to go on the mission field as a Bible translator." And I said, "Son, if I were there, let me tell you what I would tell him. God doesn't trade in first-class pediatricians for second-rate Bible translators. If God has made you that and prepared you for that, be faithful at that point. Don't go off doing something else."

That's the point. Now to the main thrust of the text for this morning. In order to understand this text, you have to understand something about the word prophet in the Bible. Whenever you see prophecy or prophet, it doesn't mean foretelling, although that can be a part of it. It means forth-telling. A prophet is one who simply speaks for God. God gives a message, and he speaks it forth. And that is what prophecy is. That's what a prophet is in the biblical sense of that term.

Now, there are a couple of other things you need to know in order to understand what's going on in this text. In the 11th chapter of Matthew, and we'll get to there probably two or three years down the road, whenever we get to the 11th chapter of Matthew, we're going to look at John the Baptist, and he's a very good friend of mine, in a lot more detail than we're doing at this morning. But in that 11th chapter, Jesus specifically says that John the Baptist is the prophet. And you said, "Well, whoopee."

Well, let me tell you what's so intriguing about this. Most Jews and most rabbis and the Pharisees and the Sadducees taught in the first century that prophecy had ended 400 years before. Josephus, the very famous Jewish historian of the first century, said that prophecy had ended at the time of Artaxerxes. And there were those rabbis who said in 586, at the destruction of the first temple, that's when the prophetic age came to an end.

So the point being here, if God hasn't spoken for 400 years, how do you recognize his voice? I mean, if there have been no prophets, then there probably have not been prophets. If there had been no prophets, how do you recognize a prophet? I don't know if you remember Hughes, the airline magnate, multi-millionaire, recluse, eccentric, when somebody wrote a book purporting to be his autobiography some seven or eight years ago. Do you remember that? And the man's fingernails were as long as his fingers, and he didn't want people to see him.

But he wanted to tell the world that he did not write that book. And so he called a news conference, but he didn't allow the newspaper people to look at him. He talked through a phone into a microphone, and it was broadcast to them. And the question was then, how do we know that this is Howard Hughes? How do we know that this is the man who created this great industry and made all this money? It's the same question we've got this morning. How do we know the voice of God if we haven't been listening to it and if he hasn't spoken in over 400 years?

I'll tell you something. John the Baptist isn't the kind of man that a pulpit committee is going to call. I mean, camel hair clothes, belt, eating locusts. I hope he put salt on them or chocolate or something, man, that'd be awful. Can you imagine? Wild honey. Can you imagine him being a prophet of God? If God's going to look for a prophet, he's going to go to a church, a multimillion-dollar building. He's going to go to the places where religion is studied and understood, certainly not John the Baptist.

So how in the world do you know that John the Baptist has a message from God? And that's the question for this morning. I have a recurring dream, maybe it's a nightmare, that I'm standing before the throne of God and the televangelist that I don't like turned out to be the ones that are the prophets. It scares me to death. And the ones that I thought were great end up to be the con men. Wouldn't that be awful?

How can you tell? A lot of people purport to speak for God, don't they? Every time you turn on the television, somebody's telling you they've got a message from God that you're to give your money. How can you tell when somebody's really got a message from God? Well, as we look at these verses that I read to you, we're going to look at something of the ministry of John the Baptist. We're going to see six tests that you need to apply about whether or not a person is a genuine prophet bringing a message from God. Enough chit-chat. What is the difference between Jim Jones and Billy Graham? Let's see if we can find out.

First, from the text, when God speaks, it is consistent with the biblical witness. Matthew 3:3, "This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah." You need to take particular note that John's ministry was not a surprise because it had been witnessed to by the Bible. That the words he spoke were not a surprise. The prophets had said a man will come and he will speak these words. John's ministry was consistent with the biblical witness.

I sometimes go to the grocery store for Anna. And Anna, having received so many packages that she did not order from her husband from the grocery store, has come upon a way over the last 25 years to make sure that I get the right thing. When the container is empty, she stands in front of me and holds it in my face. And she said, "This is what it looks like. You walk up and down the aisles until you see something that looks just like this. And when it looks just like this, you buy it and you bring it home and it'll be the right thing."

Well, that's what God's doing. That's what the Bible is all about, folks. God has given us something by which we might measure the truth, by which we might measure reality. God is saying, "When I act, it's like this. When I speak, this is the way I sound. When I talk, these are the words with which I speak." C.S. Lewis, *Chronicles of Narnia*, and I've quoted it the last three Sundays from those seven little novelettes. I haven't been reading them; I just happen to fell that way the last three weeks.

But in the final battle, and as you know, Aslan is the symbol of God, and Lucy and the people are dead and now they're in heaven. And heaven is Narnia. And Lucy's walking away with Aslan and she's thinking, I think it's Lucy, and she says, "You know why we like the earth so much? Because," she said, "it looked a little like this. It looked a little like Narnia." You see, God has given us a model, a model of truth, and unless there is consistency measured by the biblical witness, then you stay away from people like that.

Do you know what this is called? This is called technically the Canon. Now, that doesn't mean that we fire at people with it. The Canon is from the Latin and it means measurement. And so we are to measure truth by revealed propositional truth, which is the word of God. Whenever somebody tells you they've got a new revelation from God, you run like a son of a gun.

Whenever someone tells you that they have new truth, you get out of their way. Whenever anybody comes along and says the Bible was adequate and Jesus did a good thing, as the Moonies do, but we have a new Messiah who's going to fill up and make adequate what was left, then you run as fast as you can because this is the measurement. God wrote it down.

And then secondly, I would suggest when God speaks through a man or a woman, it is not only consistent, it is also attractive. Look at Matthew 3:5, "People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan." Let me say a word of caution here. Attractiveness, are you listening? Attractiveness is only one sign of authenticity. If it is the only sign, the message isn't authentic.

I'll say it again. Attractiveness is just one sign of authenticity. If it is the only sign, then the message is not authentic. When I was in broadcasting, John Holliday used to say that the key to getting a crowd, ratings, the key was to be consistent. And he said, "If we can get a man to stand in the corner on his head and spit wooden nickels and we can record it and play it consistently over the air, it'll draw a crowd."

People come to me all the time and they say, "You know, I really think that guy's a twit or that woman is really not teaching truth, but she or he is touching so many people, so I'm not going to criticize." Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hitler got a crowd. Jim Jones got a crowd. The principle of this attractiveness is only one of the signs of authenticity. If attractiveness is the only sign, then the message is no longer authentic. But if there is no attractiveness, it's just as spurious.

Guest (Male): Thanks, Steve. All this week, we're revisiting a classic sermon from Steve from way back in 1986. Our text is Matthew 3:1-12, and today we started looking at six tests to determine if a person is a real prophet from God. Wow, I think that's still a timely message, don't you? We'll get to the back nine of this sermon tomorrow. Sure hope you'll join us again then.

So, can I nerd out for a moment? I recently learned how reel-to-reel and cassette tapes work. Basically, the audio is recorded to a layer of magnetic oxide and it can store that audio for a crazy long time. I mean, upwards of decades. But here's the rub: it does have a lifespan. Eventually, that magnetic oxide can break down. The adhesive that holds it to the tape can fail. And of course, you then factor in things like physical wear, humidity, temperature changes.

So when I say that we have thousands of sermon tapes like this one from Steve, it is a big, big blessing, believe me. But it's also a lot of ticking clocks. And that's why we launched the Vault Project to digitize, preserve, and curate these timeless sermons. You can learn more at keylife.org/vault where you can already access hundreds of hours of these digitized sermons dating all the way back to the 1970s. Again, that's keylife.org/vault, V-A-U-L-T.

For you and me, embracing that we're part of a bigger story can make a huge difference in the way we approach each day. And the gospel is an invitation to do just that. Some people short-circuit their experience of the gospel by assuming it's just believing in a series of truth propositions which explain how Jesus came to save us from our sins and get us into heaven. While that is absolutely and beautifully true, there's even more of the gospel for you and me to experience.

Well, that's from an article by our Matt Hurd and you can find it in the new Key Life magazine. This new edition features articles from Matt, Steve, Justin Holcomb, and Barry Smith. Plus, you'll find info on a whole bunch of new and exciting features and products. It's new, it's improved, it's free, and it is yours when you call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to ask for that magazine or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again, just ask for your absolutely free copy of Key Life Magazine.

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