announcement: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Waking Up to Grace podcast, where we celebrate and explore the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tune in to the Waking Up to Grace podcast on every major platform. You can also listen to our episodes and read our full transcripts at wakinguptogracecom. And now here's Lenny.

Lenny: 0:22

Welcome back to the Waking Up to Grace podcast everyone. It's been a little while since our last episode and I'm glad to be back. I missed you guys. Our scriptures talk a lot about bearing fruit. Have you ever questioned what fruit you are bearing as a Christian? Have you even questioned the fruit others are bearing? If we look at ourselves as spiritual plantings, would our fruit be in line with our maturity? When planting a blueberry bush, you can expect to get fruit the third year after planting.

Lenny: 0:55

I planted a blueberry bush and followed the instructions given with the plant. The first year, only a few berries were produced. This was expected as the plant was establishing, but on the third year there was no fruit nothing whatsoever. The shocking part is that the plant itself is still alive and well, but it has barely grown and it's not bearing fruit. I learned from this experience that a plant can be alive and bear no fruit, and when this happens, its growth does not happen as it should either. The natural process is being hindered, something is missing and the plant is not getting what it needs to mature properly and bear its fruit. When a plant that should be well established is not bearing fruit or maturing in growth, something is very wrong About this tragedy.

Lenny: 1:42

The author of Hebrews writes in Hebrews 5, verse 11,. Concerning him, we have much to say, and he's talking about Yeshua, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For, though, by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food For everyone. Who partakes to need milk and not solid food, for everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant, but solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil. This is from the NASB translation. Today I'll be reading from the NASB. It had become hard to explain the truth to these people. They had not been practicing discernment and, as a result, could not handle more than an infant. But, as we read, they should have been teachers by that time. So what happened? Why did these people remain infants after receiving the gospel of our Lord? These Hebrews had allowed law and self-effort to guide them instead of faith. They turned back to the same old thing that brought condemnation to Israel for thousands of years, rules and regulations. They traded walking and the finished work of Christ Yeshua for a religion of self-effort.

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Today, at least here in America, barren fruit has become associated with conformity to the corporate church structure. If you're not institutionalized, you're told you need to get plugged in. Nonconformity to the institutionalized church structure gets you that Lone Ranger tag and you're seen as a barren, fruitless mess and even considered dangerous to others. Is this view true, or is it actually the opposite? Are these church institutions even bearing fruit? I think that all depends on what kind of fruit you're looking for. I think you'll find an abundance of fruit in today's institutions, but it's not the fruit our Lord is looking for. In order to determine the fruit that is being presented, we must look for its origin. We must find the source of the fruit before we can determine whether it is the fruit of the flesh or the fruit of the Spirit.

Lenny: 3:52

Have you ever gone to the grocery store and picked out the perfect looking fruit? This stuff looked excellent. You got all excited, but when you made it home and took a bite, it was bitter. This is how you know the fruit that is not from the Spirit of God. You have to test the fruit. You can't trust the appearance alone. This is important. We can never go on to immaturity if we judge our faith based on appearance. Many wise shoppers have come to realize that you cannot rely on the grocery store to get good fruit, due to the many issues that come with mass production and a centralized system. These wise shoppers will taste the fruit before they put it in their cart.

Lenny: 4:33

Are you tasting the fruit of your local church? Have you trained yourself to discern good from evil, or are you discerning based on feelings? Are you listening carefully and, like a Berean, checking the scriptures to be sure that what you're being taught is true, or are you trusting that your pastor has it all together? The old saying you are what you eat is fitting in this way. If you eat the fruit of truth, you will also bear the fruit of truth, but if you partake in error, you will bear the fruit of error. But if you partake in error, you will bear the fruit of error.

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When you go to a church and see happy people smiling and excited, does that tell you that the Spirit of God is present? What then do you say to yourself when you see people gathering to worship false gods with great enthusiasm when you see an atheist donating thousands of dollars to fight cancer? Do you seek Christ? When you hear people counsel others to embrace what the universe wants from you, or teach concepts like do good things and good things will come to you, is that Yahweh spreading good cheer? When a so-called teacher of scripture tells his congregation that we must work to maintain our salvation, is our Lord impressed with their great service to him? When a teacher insists that we must maintain our fellowship with a holy God, is our Lord impressed with his performance of the flesh?

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Today's church institutions are the synagogues of our day. Those attending begin trading a true relationship with Christ Yeshua for religion. Religion is what we seek today, and Christ has no place in religion. A building of worship was used in the Old Covenant. That building was destroyed by Yahweh in favor of a building not made by human hands. The new temple of worship is the body of Christ Yeshua and the Old Temple, the temple of the old covenant, has been destroyed long ago, never to return, never to be restored. You cannot institutionalize God's grace, but that's never stopped mankind from trying. After the apostles, mankind wasted no time in building its places of worship and an error began to call them the church.

Lenny: 6:43

In my last episode, we explored the flesh versus the spirit, and we can now apply what we discovered to discern the fruit of the spirit versus the fruit of the flesh. My prayer is that we can train our minds to discern good from evil, just as the author of Hebrews desired for those being written to. Discerning good from evil will require us to understand the difference in the fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the flesh. So let's get started, shall we? Our first passage is going to pertain to the title of this episode, and is one that is constantly taken out of context, at least in my experience.

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Matthew 7, verse 15 Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles are they. So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. This passage is constantly used in Christian circles to attack the beliefs of those who do not conform the way others would like them to.

Lenny: 8:01

It's sad to observe how misunderstood prophecy is today. We have drifted so far from the meaning in scripture that the term has entirely lost its purpose. This passage where Christ Yeshua is speaking is about prophets. To be clear, christ fulfilled all prophecy. If he hadn't, then our Bible is still an open book waiting for its next chapter. All we need, then, is someone like Joseph Smith to come along and tell us that our scripture is all wrong and to believe what they said instead. Have you ever considered this? Are you still waiting for a prophet to tell you what the next biblical event will be? In our scripture, in Luke 21, christ Yeshua tells us the destruction of Jerusalem would fulfill all that is written.

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Most scholars agree that the apostles believed Christ would return in their lifetime. Why would they believe that? Because he told them. Matthew 24, 34. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away. Until all things take place.

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And after Yeshua predicted Peter's death in John 21, peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back on his bosom at the supper and said Lord, who is the one who betrays you? So Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus Lord, and what about this man? Jesus said to him If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. Therefore, this saying went out among the brethren that the disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only If I want him to remain until I come. What is that to you?

Lenny: 9:49

We can barely read anything in our New Testament for five minutes without hearing about the kingdom of God, the wrath and the second coming of Christ that was coming soon. There are at least 101 passages in our New Testament that clearly describe this event coming soon. The Greek word mellow means something is about to come. Mellow is the word used in a multitude of passages to describe when the parousia would happen. Parousia is a word to describe the second coming of Christ. The parousia was about to come. Have you ever considered about to come to be 2,000 years later? Me neither.

Lenny: 10:24

When we read scripture, we cannot deny that the apostles believed Christ would return in their lifetime, but yet many will call you a heretic for saying that he did. Those who fight against full preterism or fulfilled eschatology fight against scripture and fight against the words of Christ Yeshua. I have no dog in that fight. I cannot in good conscience teach something contrary to the words of our Lord and his apostles. When we seek God's word in our scriptures, we will find that the second coming was synonymous with the destruction of Jerusalem and would fulfill all that is written Luke 21 20.

Lenny: 10:59

The book of Revelation needs to be interpreted in light of the past, not as a prediction of the future. So why isn't this destruction of Jerusalem in our Bible? It's all over our Bibles. We've just been trained not to see it. We know that it took place and many events have been well documented by the Jewish historian Josephus, among other historians. The fact that the temple has been gone and the land desolate for almost 2,000 years should help us to accept this truth.

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The destruction of Jerusalem and its holy temple, as prophesied by Christ, his apostles and the prophets, occurred in AD 70. Today, it seems we follow something that Joseph Smith might have taught. Today's view of prophecy sounds more like this we cannot hold to a belief that Jesus meant what he said. He must have meant a generation as thousands of years, and the apostle he mentioned is still either alive or Christ meant something completely different. It is probably because he said no one knows the exact day it will happen. Christ must have made a mistake because he just didn't know. That doesn't have to make him a false prophet. It was a simple human error. No dead people physically came out of the ground in AD 70, so that destruction must have been a coincidence. It was the Roman army, not God. That can't be what everyone prophesied about. Jesus wasn't physically there. He must have really meant that the temple would be destroyed accidentally and would not establish the new covenant age at that time. That would happen later, in 2020-something or maybe 2030.

Lenny: 12:43

First, a group of people who call themselves Jews but have no actual lineage to prove it will have to rise to financial power and create a nation called Israel to take the place of what God destroyed and use it to commit all kinds of evil and sinister war crimes against humanity, with the support of Christians. Once everyone believes that they are God's holy people and God's holy nation again, we can build a real holy temple, unlike that silly one that got destroyed by those pesky Romans. Then we can have a real second coming of Christ and we will all get raptured into heaven before anything bad happens. Look, I'm not trying to make fun of anyone here. We have all followed the calf path in our society today. I just want you to think for a moment about what you have been told to believe.

Lenny: 13:37

I don't know if a lot of people realize what dispensational theology actually teaches and how much it is woven into all of the mainstream Christian teaching of our day. Futurism is the belief that Christ is going to return in our future. Futurism is merely a branch off of the tree of dispensationalism. Even a post-millennialist view is well-rooted in dispensational doctrine. As I mentioned before, dispensationalism is a fabricated teaching that stems from the Schofield Study Bible and is well-rooted in today's cheerleading the fabricated nation Israel, as they murder innocent people and steal land that is not theirs. The Schofield Study Bible creation is tied to the wealthy bankers and founders of the newly re-established nation of Israel and was proudly distributed all over the world by the Moody Bible Institution. This should help paint a picture of how we all know about these teachings today. Money can really get a job done, can't it? Not to worry, though, yahweh is not ignorant to their ways and their labors will not go unrecognized.

Lenny: 14:42

Did you know that at its core, dispensationalist doctrine teaches that Christ Yeshua was not supposed to be killed. Yes, you heard me correctly. They teach that killing the Messiah was not supposed to happen. It was an accident. I know, Try wrapping your head around that lie for a minute. So apparently, according to these people, when Yahweh saw that they killed his son, he had to really think fast about what he could do to fix the problem. That's when God decided he would dispense an age of grace, temporarily, making Gentiles evangelists until the proper number came in. Then, when the proper number comes in, well, I believe that's when the second coming would occur, rebuilding the temple and reinstituting God's law, and animal sacrifices to Israel and Christ would then reign on earth for a thousand years, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Lenny: 15:31

I think I'm pretty close to accurate on this. I do apologize if I'm slightly off on anything. I'm not too sorry though, as it's all made up anyway, but can you see how crazy this is? I mean, come on, this is so contrary to scripture that it's mind-blowing. These guys actually hand out books that are bigger than the Bible, teaching you how to read your Bible and rightly divide scripture. How do I know this? Because I was given one of these books after hours of discussion with somebody that was under the bondage of this doctrine.

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Have you ever considered what happens after you get raptured under the error of futurist doctrines? Well, you have to study dispensationalism. To fill in the blanks, if you believe in that doctrine. The deeper you dig, the more your mind will be blown. That is, if you don't fall for the lies. You can say this stuff doesn't matter. But that would say that the lives of innocent Christians in Palestine don't matter and that a group of God-hating people trying to build a temple and calling it God's temple is just no big deal. Even worse, having Christians worship and pray for them to do it.

Lenny: 16:40

Getting back to our topic, what do you consider to be prophecy? Have you experienced a person claiming to be a prophet? I want to take a moment to examine a passage in scripture that will allow us to get a real good handle on what prophecy is and what it isn't, according to the Lord. In context, this passage is in regards to those prophets who would come to follow Moses, leading all the way up to the times of Christ and his apostles. Deuteronomy 18, 15-20.

Lenny: 17:07

The Lord, your God, will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among you, from your countrymen. You shall listen to him. This is according to all that you have asked of the Lord, your God. In Horeb, on the day of the assembly, saying Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord, my God, let me not see this great fire anymore or I will die. The Lord said to me they have spoken. Well, I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen, like you, and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. You may say in your heart how will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.

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So if we compare and contrast our Matthew 7, 15 passage with Deuteronomy 18, 15, we will see with clarity that they both teach us in regards to prophecy. From Matthew 7, we read Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. And a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. From Deuteronomy 18, we read I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen, like you, and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

Lenny: 18:49

Christ Yeshua taught the same things about prophecy as Yahweh. This should come as no surprise. According to Deuteronomy, a prophet is the mouthpiece of God. Our Lord does not lie, does he no, about prophets. Yeshua said a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. So if a so-called prophet declares something that is not true, what then? In Matthew 7, we read Nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Then, in Deuteronomy 18, but the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, in Matthew 7, yeshua states In Deuteronomy 18, we read there was no room for error in prophecy.

Lenny: 20:16

It was not taken lightly and it was not a guessing game to be played for prestige and popularity. A true prophet was never wrong about a single thing, and a false prophet was deserving of death according to the law. Christ Yeshua proved himself to be a true prophet in many ways. One example that immediately comes to my mind is his words I mentioned earlier in Luke 21 20. But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Even those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. Christ predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed and was so bold as to say that the destruction would fulfill all that is written. This was no small claim being made here. He even gave a clear time frame of the event in order to establish himself as a prophet. Matthew 24, 34 the destruction of Jerusalem that Christ Yeshua predicted. This generation will not pass away until all these things take place. The destruction of Jerusalem that Christ Yeshua predicted occurred in AD 70. It is recorded history and the temple no longer stands to this day. We do not need any more evidence to prove that Christ was a true prophet. It's all there.

Lenny: 21:42

The real question Christians should be asking today is why are we so focused on what is going on in Israel? What is there to predict that's not already been done? Is our Bible an open book waiting to be finished by the next prophet? Anyone who claims to be a prophet and makes a single mistake deserves death according to scripture, so we ought to be more careful about how we toss this term around as Christians. If you call others false prophets, then where are the true prophets? The truth is, we should have stopped seeking prophets a long time ago. Our Bible is not an open book waiting for another chapter, and there are no apostles leading the church today. We have the scriptures and we have the spirit of Christ to guide us into truth and, god willing, they will, should we decide. We are tired of the institutional bondage we are under. The huge difference between us and God's holy people under the law is that we have been made right with God completely and have access to his holy Spirit whenever we are humble enough to be guided by it. We are fully alive to God, but also fully free to lean on our own understanding or to be guided by his. The age of the law and the prophets is over. True Israel is now in Christ and will be forever. Now, at the end of our passage in Matthew 7, christ Yeshua makes another statement that is tossed around a lot in today's Christian circles Matthew 7, 22.

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Many will say to me on that day, lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. What is Yeshua talking about here? The common view is that he's talking about Christians. Why is that the common view? It's because teachers today feel that they have to apply all of scripture to Christians. When Yeshua speaks or the apostles speak, we have to apply those things directly to ourselves. They would think this is a major error. Sometimes, this error causes us less harm than others. We can often come to the correct conclusion, but we do not gain the true meaning of a passage this way and end up lacking a depth of knowledge. This passage is a good example. To start with, let's read it once more Matthew 7, 22. Yeshua said Many will say to me on that day Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. If we take this as Christ speaking directly to us, as many do, you could say that those who sin, you who practice lawlessness, are in danger of losing their salvation or being denied by Christ. However, we learn from John's epistle that those who practice lawlessness are those who reject Christ. 1 John 3.9. So these people Christ Yeshua speaks of are not Christians. This is 100% certain. But who are they?

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First, we need to understand that Christ Yeshua's ministry was to the lost sheep of Israel. Matthew 15 says but he answered and said I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. If Christ was dealing with Israel, who would he be talking to here? Well, the previous passages tied to this one are dealing with false prophets. Well, the previous passages tied to this one are dealing with false prophets. What would a false prophet in Yeshua's day teach? They would teach that Christ Yeshua is not the Messiah, wouldn't they? Yes, they would. But why would they say to him Lord, lord? This is simple. They called on the Father, but they rejected the Son. Yeshua was Lord. They didn't believe it. Therefore, the Lord did not know them.

Lenny: 26:00

1 John 2.23. So again, this passage deals with false prophets and those who reject Christ as Messiah. Most of the people of Israel would reject Messiah, but they had the law and the prophets. They had the signs and wonders. We don't hear a lot about Israel casting out demons in the Old Testament, but it was evidently happening in the days of Yeshua's ministry. When they accused him of casting out demons in the name of a demon, he replied If I, by Baalzebul. Cast out demons was something that the first century Pharisees, whom Yeshua was dealing with, prided themselves in. But in what name would it have been done? Not in the name of the Son of God.

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Many grace teachers will say this passage is about Christians who believe in their own self-effort, who have faith in themselves and their works, and not in Christ. I believed it that way for years. Actually, it was far closer to truth than believing Christ was rejecting those who had faith but failed to live up to his holy standards. It even falls in line with the gospel, but it's still wrong. That's not what Yeshua is saying here. Whether it sounds logical or not, this passage is regarding Christ rejecting Jews and false prophets.

Lenny: 27:12

Sloppy hermeneutics leads to sloppy understanding. We should strive for truth and the proper reasoning behind it. In this way, we will all learn and grow stronger in our understanding. These hermeneutic principles will teach us to discern well and see error more vividly. Always consider the audience and the purpose of the statement being made before you move into application. Most all of error comes flooding in when we jump into applying a passage to ourselves before we know exactly what is going on in that passage. That's what I got for this episode, guys, but stay tuned for part two, as we have a whole lot of ground left to cover before we put this topic to rest. In my next episode, I'll discuss how we can learn to taste fruit before we take it home, so to speak. We'll dig into fruit bearing in its proper context, from a full grace perspective. Keep on walking in the finished work of Christ, guys, and I will see you on the next episode.

announcement: 28:11

Thank you for listening to the Waking Up to Grace podcast brought to you by the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you enjoyed today's episode, we would love to hear from you. You can send encouragement our way right from our episodes and transcripts page or reach Lenny privately from the contact form at wakinguptogracecom.