Daily Dose of Hope
June 3, 2025
Day 2 of Week 9
Scripture - Matthew 7:15-29
Prayer: Almighty God, Search our hearts today. Show us those places that we need to change. Show us where we aren’t fully devoted to you and your Kingdom. Lord, we need your wisdom and guidance. On our own, we falter and drift. Lord, we want to know you more. We want to be a living example of your love and holiness. Help us, Jesus. Amen.
Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, the devotional that complements the New Hope Daily Bible reading plan. Currently, we are doing a deep dive into the Gospels and Acts. Today, we finish up Matthew 7. This is our last day covering the Sermon on the Mount.
Today’s scripture starts with a discussion of true and false teachers. Jesus uses the analogy of wolves in sheep clothing to describe false teachers/prophets. They look good on the outside, like really righteous and smart people, but inside they are deceptive and even evil. They aren’t batting for the right team.
False teachers have been an issue in the faith for 2000 years. Even today, we need to be really careful about the voices we allow to speak into our lives. This is the importance of knowing Scripture, being intimately familiar with the whole Biblical narrative. Know your Bible! And be careful. There are two things I tend to watch out for like a hawk. First, I am always skeptical of people who take a piece of Scripture and want to plop it down into our lives in 2025 with no context or interpretation. All kinds of horrors have been justified this way. Run, don't walk, away from these people! Second, I am incredibly wary of people who add to Scripture. Yes, this is true but... and then there is something else. If something doesn’t seem right to you then it might not be. Be prepared to do your own research, searching the whole Bible for what God says on a specific topic.
Jesus then moves to true and false disciples. This one is a little scary. Jesus says that some people will say, “Lord, Lord, we did all this spiritual stuff in your name...” but they will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. What does Jesus mean by this? Obviously, a false anything is usually bad. But false disciples?
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